among the blue desks was a meager
audition for adulthood crumpled

into a mess of wooden shadows reciting
barbell lines on the film school second

floor (stair steps closer to Orion) how
I was dreaming young of the world’s

grand magnanimousness suffused
with balloons that smelled of palm frond

everglades my school-sanctioned camera
would record the nightglow trees by lights

of Coe Lake where it snowed pine cones
in the backyard of my mother’s house

where acres stretch forever rugs of green grass
and hunger the endless hunger for somewhere

anywhere else

(originally published in KGB Bar Lit Mag, Spring 2021)