And he speaks at night, to past

nights, when I first read Russian

for English class under Reagan

 

and we played cards in the kitchen,

drank iced tea with the windows open,

and spoke about Nostradamus.

 

You sketched the future in your pad:

someone stopped for walking,

someone for a t-shirt, a song

 

with lyrics keyed into an arm

like the numbers on your grandfather’s,

or microchips inside a sci-fi head

 

read by starbound probes.   I can

picture you shouting at the television set,

waving your hands, getting up to leave

 

the past where it was, stop the future

before it begins, scanning thoughts

like canned soda in the big box sellers,

 

or scanning ourselves to take inventory

of our own state.  You send me cookies

from the grave to sweeten the end

 

of January.  I eat nothing, ask the cards

to tell me more.  They are electronic now

and spin hourglasses, waiting for answers.