Statistics have shown that the more brass you eat
the smaller the chance
that you will give birth to a moon

If you relegate the wildflowers to the backyard
you will be ten times more likely
to be cruel to family ghosts

If you seek meaning in dust
you will dust
incessantly

The more often you indulge
in wet thoughts at lonely midnight
the less often you’ll sing of conveyor belts

More people have a chance
of dying at the hands of a priest
than will love the pop music of twenty years in the future

Flake gold sprinkled on the cereal bowl
has been shown to enrich the soil
from which grows the tree of all triviality

and the leaves of that tree
stick to the skin and block daylight
seven out of ten times

Statistics have shown statistics
can serve as a gloomy blanket
on a perfectly shiny beach

In any set of numbers
there’s a fifty percent chance of finding juice
for the quenching of embers

A greater part of the darkness left behind
will be overweight children’s tears
pure as the moan of charmed snakes

The numbers want to strangle
the scent of lovemakers as clean
as new mown grass

When no one chooses to count
the mysteries separately
they are as ordinary as air

Statistics have shown
statistics
turn death black when applied too thickly

Ninety percent of all humans alive now
would rather be counted as one of the ripples
than be a Stone

that once launched
slices into water
that cannot be divided

and vanishes
to rest in the lake
with the others that have piled up

in infinite piles
Memories of singularity
and monuments to the rejection

of the laws of chance

The lie
emptied itself
with a hiss.
It lay between you
as snaky and harmless
as a shed skin,
though it reminded you both
of poison
hiding somewhere nearby.
Neither of you
wanted to speak of it
but that papery husk
was so obvious
it drew your eyes
away from each other
into corners
and under the bed.
You each spoke
a while longer, hoping
no sting would surprise you,
no venom would rise
into your lungs and surge
forth at the other,
and while you managed
to get through the fear
and move on
you knew you’d be listening
and watching for it
for long bitter days and weeks
to come.

He opens the scissors
and begins to cut

the details which matter to him
(the origin of the journey,
the car, the mirror loose
on the driver’s door)

from those he has no need for
(the way the air felt like fur
when she held her hand
out the window as they drove,
her need to stop and pee
every fifty miles or so)

then stitches the parts
into a cloak, a story
fitted to what he believes
and to hell with what really
took place (long periods
of absolutely nothing, no talk,
mutual simmering)

since now that he’s done
her perspective is just scraps
on the floor of the motel room

where
he ended up alone
with no one to tell him
that the cloak looks unfinished
and doesn’t fit all that well.