Possible

Down the casino hallway a sweet chlorine smell
The pool for public strangers A boyfriend
lifts his girl up over his head

If the earth is one big living organism holding us
giving us jobs Like us Like us and the bacteria in us

Then
If/then humans making plastic is a symptom
of a sickness

Ohh ever write a poem and it thinks too much
when it should be wailing That’s this one

So do you think it’s possible to fix this The wafting
of sugary chemicals about the slot machines
the waste this aching the thinking and thinking

I left part of myself in an old virtual world
that stopped being built like a decade ago
I had a digital body with sharp strawberry hair

I place my body plainly through space

I left South Dakota

Holding a coke can on a waterfall path on a black lake
with big boulders coming to the sky like big bellies
of floating stone monsters

I don’t claim to know too much about the planet
Just bits and pieces of it that break off and slide into
its own waters

We can float too
We can float to the concrete edges
on our backs in the humid casino pool room

Meanwhile

Jen devastated meanwhile Brad hangs on beach
Angelina goes skydiving the oceans rise the man is
finished Brooklyn is cool again the violets turned
bluer the frost went away the lover left the coral
bleached the fish were fewer the recycling truck
didn’t come the child was delayed the paragliders
jumped into the winds above the shore the cliff
eroded

Dana Jaye Cadman is a writer and artist. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming on poets.org, in New England Review, The Moth Magazine, PRISM, Raleigh Review, Atlanta Review, North American Review, The Glacier Journal, Southeast Review and elsewhere. She is an Assistant Professor and Director of Creative Writing for Pace University Pleasantville. Find her on danajaye.com