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MK Francisco


DICHONDRA REPENS 

Ponysfoot’s a cure maybe with 200 variations of luck or variant futures. A chorus of dense glossy mats packed against erosion and jaundice, pushing a fill narrative. Everything that separates us from the common disorder of dead patches and dry spells. The earthworms are incomplete, in perpetual motion. Still pubescent and prone to extravagant memory loss. So much to see, eyesore all over, as if staring into it will reveal some truth, levitating in the garden, playing the keyboard’s sharp notes. History on loop. What is the perfect order? A kiss is a transference of guilt. Solving the mystery doesn’t prove a thing. The pillows of my toes step into a cool private traffic, tessellate and lowercase. Meanwhile, each leaf emanates an active public charisma, soft yet unflinching. We follow the same methods and errors. Plants and their collaborators caught off guard for similar reasons.

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THE PINK NOISE

                       of police helicopter beats
                                                         
                                                         a crooning blue drone

                       soft & dirty
                                                        riverstatic

                                                                                  banded red tail lights
            traffic floodflow

                                     stumblinghisses

                                                   a luminous keyboard worn to its electricalghost
                                    a dog disguised as a hyena
                                                                                  no one could be sure
 
                     pink debris of
                                                               refrigerator leaks
                                                                       
                                                                            the air fryer casting an orange hum

                   the pulsating toothbrush pushing sodium frequencies

                                         hazy green beacons in the night bathroom

                   artificial rainfall with longslowwaves but withholding
                       
                         the supernatural inconsistency

                                                  slips & drags
                                                                       
                                                           windslooping

                                                                     slurryboats

In the dream, I take my dog for teeth cleaning. When I arrive to pick him up, he has human-like teeth. Huge flat front teeth and one of them is so worn through, I can see a circular transparency. I regret wasting all this money.

––––

MK Francisco lives in Seattle, Washington. A graduate of the University of Washington MFA program, her work has appeared in Fence, Quarterly West, The Tiny, and Antiphony. Her book Insects of the Data Lake is forthcoming from Inverted Syntax.


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