this is hardly space          more a loosening
as of a collar pulled too tight

as if space that will not feel real
expands suddenly & you lose GPS

that feminine purr          bourgeois reassurance
take your pulse with a stromuhr

the medium is overkill          no bourn for
a medium but the slant rows of trucks

queuing for commodities          your head
bears the pharaoh's crown & its little asp

of upper & lower Lakeview king
these houses all built in the nineties

begin to glow at night          sometimes
we wake to the quondam whine of the printer

but the printer is not plugged in
nobody reads the messages          but the gist must be

remember thou art only a man          or number
after number placed cleanly over a bar

& then over nothing at all