Ode to Scorpios

when you proclaim we are your forever girlfriends and forever boyfriends time illegitimately

stops why is your credit union password requiring us to withdraw plasma then press blood

onto swatches fixed water sign eh so water cannot even be liquid

like liquid solid state we cannot shake hear sloshing never see ice crystals

you frighten four horses of the Sun plus seven infants at High’s Ice-Cream shop

you advertise Helios’s boy Phaethon The Moron via megaphone emphasizing both first

and last syllables who begs daddy for chariot go work save up buy cheap jeep Mor/On

blared across high school lacrosse field 1.47 meters Danny DeVito insists DeVito is awesome

at sports pass DeVito the basketball fine to laugh with you yet at you no way

receive “touché” messages all day you protect entire villages without recognizing any

villagers names your fossilized penis embeds in shale deathstalker species

venom Lq2 so potent it blocks potassium shrivels pancreases Venus insists Mars

gave you to Pluto FDA refuses to release antitoxin unless you agree to love America

Ode to Grief

multipurpose eucalyptus wipes inside Wegmans you tricked me into staring at 840 seconds

I purchased Isabel Allende Barbie doll keeping her in package you woke me

sat me on sofa I am strong I did not sleep on sofa I went to bed after sofa

you made me feel airstreams around my stagnant face you made you had cashier ask if

black licorice was for anyone special not for me I think I told her I was black licorice

you got demon Aamon in woodpecker form named after botanist Thomas Nuttall to sublet

summer rest you had me hop train I could have hijacked I purchased Tokyo Jazz Club

print of cat playing piano to admire so I would not simply die I talked to cucumber spider

you altered my welcome mat from crimson we hope you brought wine to tannish hello to pale

blank no greeting you convinced me drive to Lake Mead I got as far as signage turned

back home entirely different state you forced me to assign students read The Grapes of Wrath

started late May I read that turtle chapter aloud

Jeffrey Hecker is author of Rumble Seat (San Francisco Bay Press, 2011) & chapbooks Hornbook (Horse Less Press, 2012), Instructions for the Orgy (Sunnyoutside Press, 2013) & Ark Aft (The Magnificent Field, 2020). Recent work appears in South Dakota Review and Bennington Review. A fourth-generation Kepanī via Hawaii, he teaches at The Muse Writers Center, reads for Quarterly West and Okay Donkey Magazine @heckheck03.bsky.social