Pre-Historic by Jen Tynes

I was earlier, an open source walking
through metal detectors, the grainy post

office cranny where the making of a line
is “you didn’t disrespect me” over and
around like a record. Sometimes slurped

back, everyone who knows me steps
out a little to the breezeway, post-witnesses
to the absence where the car has been
staying but not standing. Listen to the tiny

suctioned frogs jettisoned. The maps
unimbedded. Like a desert with a woman
in the middle of it, or the way a white
envelope across the palm makes ones calves

push away from ones body. Speed it
up and we sound like we apologize.
We sound like a floodlight on a flood.