The way a halved peach breathes, then rots
from the inside out.

Out of ten bars, by the fifth, half of us had flickered
out and by this ninth one, it ended up just him
and me. A matchstick balanced on a stool, he sat

Loaded with hawks’ cries and horses’ huffs
Ennio Morricone’s score wails

When the genie appears, I’m in a frivolous
mood. First request? My mom’s apple pie.

slack in a bag from the freezer aisle
shaken out like shrunken grey memes
I long for the podding of beans

I go to the top of the risen hill,
above the trees, beyond the grass,
where only hard ground lives

We searched for it

through the tarmac in every rain-bruised sky
in dark Pennine shadows where great mills

spewed out ringlets of ghost-grey fog

I like to think it’s a story about himself and Einstein
floating in zero gravity, Albert sailing through the capsule
toward his drifting pipe, Brian playing We Will Rock You—