If dolphins could fly as good as they swim

we’d experience things like dolphin shadows

whenever we went to the ground to resolve

our undone shoelaces. This absence, too, is

a shape they don’t teach you at business school.

You ever kick it with a dolphin’s shadow? The thing

emotes homologous to the first time you witnessed

your smartphone screen shatter. The thing emotes

homologous to the titillation aroused by editing the

Wikipedia page for ‘ventriloquism’. In the darkness

I thought it was a corner but it was a sex joke about

two walls coming together. Getting closer I thought

cat or ghost, for sure. Strike me down. Shone my

phone and it was a bugle announcing the invention

of flavoured milk(!) I went to school with a kid who

lied to me about dolphins. Said exercise such as

running would cause my brain to release

dolphins. I was working my first job before

I realised he’d mistaken dolphins for endorphins.

Going to tell my grandchildren this was inconsolable

intrigue. Nondescript respite. Nature itself. Ego inquiry.

Selective abstraction. Unmanned nonsense. Sweet

menace. Misfired association. Cathexis. Honey.

Fuck honey. Honey is the reason I got my tooth

drilled out. I was one year old surviving on powdered

milk and honey. My tooth went black and the nerve died.

Going to tell my grandchildren honey is made the same

way as fancy wine. Like instead of stomping on barrels

of grapes, workers jump on piles of dead bees

and all that is left after an hour’s labour

is a puddle of honey. Workers

drunk on beesting venom

jar up the mess

with speechless hands

and no gloves.