ECHOSTENCH

B asks me, does an echo have a stench?

When people talk at me I drop everything
and set my ears to listening.

Panda corrects me from the bedroom
when B asks me a physics question,
okay maybe doesn't correct me but
makes B know she knows answer too.

My parents are so bored they are going
to give themselves the 'Rona sin querer
completely by mistake but for a super
kooky reason like running out of BBQ sauce.

The Lego birdfeeders B and I made are sweet,
but we have since learned that little birds are jerks,
free-loading oafs that will spill lesser seeds
to beak at savory and scintillating flavorpods.

The baby moonwalks on your face if your sleep
in the bed, so I hangnail on the edge like a speedbump,
okay maybe not a speedbump but certainly a retaining wall.

I'm sending emails all day for work, but should I be
monitoring the acronyms for the daily dirty decree?

Should I be out beating cazuelas and bleating vuvuselas
about pandemic blues?

Do I go out then and make more trouble for myself
than I can possibly handle? Should I take advantage
of steals and bargains when the world is losing its
Purell mind, its miniature hand-sanitizer carabiner?

At the very least, you are going to have to support
the water balloon fight on the side of your wife and come
down hard on B when he sloshes an aquatic grenade at her face.

The problem with water balloons as a projectile are that they
are a dollar too late and a dollar too little.

How crisp the explosion of coldwater on my nape, down my shirt,
slaloming down my hirsute belly and quicksilver kissing my nipples.

FACE TIME WITH DAVID OF THE OCEAN

I spoke with an old
friend today on Face,
while chasing the baby
through a church
parking lot.

The friend on Face
was shooting hoops
on an empty indoor
basketball court.

He told me he was
in Texas because
the National Guard
needed him to mold
cadets into leaders,
but that his wife
was still in Northern
California with
the baby they adopted
from when they were
just guardians.

The baby tackled
the steps at back
and was picking up
speed, you should
have seen him
coordinate knees
to elbows and gallop
up them like a spider-
horse-monkey-jockey.

All that distance,
all those years, dis-
appeared from the cache
of this current I-don't-
know as we sat there
trying to make light
of old trophies,
lauding old colleagues,
recalling the work
only we clearly cared about.

Today I did Face
with an old friend,
a friend I used to
teach in the jail with
and the baby conquered
steps in a church parking
lot with great acoustics.