Banana Palace. Dana Levin

      His head’s on fire.

      Like a Paleolithic shaman

      working now in the realm of air, he

      folds his hands—

      No more casting bones

      for the consulting seeker, this gesture

      seems to mean.

      Your business, his flaming head suggests,

      is with your thought-machine.

      How it churns and churns.

      Lord Should and Not-Enough,

      Mute the Gigantor, looming dumb

      with her stringy hair—

      Deadalive Mom-’n’-Dad (in the sarcophagus

      of parentheses

      you’ve placed them)—

      He’s a yogi, your man

      with a hat of smoke. Serene, chugging out streams

      of constructed air…

      Mind’s an accident

      of bio-wiring, is one line of thinking.

      We’re animals that shit out

      consciousness, is another.

      The yogi says:

      you must understand yourself

      as projected vapor.

      Thus achieve your

      superpower.

MORNING NEWS

      We were mutants, we were being

      put into groups.

      Assigned a patch of gymnasium floor—

      A gelatinous plasma with star-sparking

      was part of my body—