She’s simply not

interested in the

correlation between

my mental health &

a good dose of

Keeping Up with

the Kardashians;

nor the poetry of

Sam Riviere; nor

the ballsports of

many a variety
Justin, a linguist would say,

violates backchannel norms.

He withholds those subtle signs—

mmm-hmm, right, yeah—quick

head-nods—that indicate an

engaged listener, & encourage

the speaker to continue.

He makes eye contact

like a person who has been

told that eye contact is very,

very important
Kafka once wrote,

I tell her, I solve

problems by letting

them devour me.

Yeah, she replies,

but I don’t think

he meant that

as advice
He lives in a hotel now. His monkey

was recently confiscated in Germany
One way to solve

these problems,

she tells me,

is to not write

this poem at all.

I say, Stop making

this about you
He takes Adderall to help him

concentrate, because his sleep

is too restless to make endorphins.

But he hopes to cut it out soon,

and replace it with something more

natural – he’s flying to New York

tomorrow to see the specialist
I’m sorry, I

tell her later,

sorrier than

I can say

in such a

tiny chat box
Today is Justin’s first day off

Adderall. He has the arcade

closed so he can shoot hoops

with the journalist who’s inter-

viewing him for GQ; he has the

cineplex closed so he can

take you to the movies
I’m working

on a poem,

I tell her, that

destabilises

contemporary

verse – but

not much.

I mean, it’s not

doing anything

interesting

with the line,

meter, or voice;

it ignores the

entire history

of the lyric as

well as Charles

Bernstein; it’s

not conceptual,

or if it is does

not realise; it’s

neither intimate

nor alienating

enough, it’s

not concerned

with troubling

that binary,

only itself;

it’s exceedingly

long and boring;

but not quite

elating in it

terribleness.

It simulates

the feeling of

disappointment

without delivering
He plays the journalist a new song

he is working on called ‘Insecurities’;

he asks her if she likes it. She does.

The hook, Oh, oh… oh, oh…

fix all of your insecurities –

rattles round in her head for days