Stepping on a Thumbtack Hurts More Than a Lego But Less Than a Crackpipe

The reports are in.
Your brain a little cartographed moon.

He walked not in front but beside you
as he carried you to the edge
of the ochre landscape.
In his right hand a note like a child’s
creased and folded at the seams
whose words no one would read.

A moon run out of light on a Tuesday.

Whether the milk had gone
the scientists could not be sure.
How many joules? How much elephant
to purvey?

All the toys left out.

An expired you no longer good
for this earth you were not wanting.

RUTH ANTOINETTE RODRIGUEZ is a poet of Mexican descent from Houston. Her poems have appeared in jubilat. She’s an associate chapbook editor at BOAAT Press. In 2017 she co-founded Antidote Books, an independent bookstore in Vermont featuring readings and workshops with emerging, underrepresented and vital poets and writers.