What’s beyond the two lights at the edge / of the bay bridge tunnel blinking / out of turn, one a bit more butch / than the other

I was born March 24th, the same day as Harry Houdini, so my family used to take annual trips to the Harry Houdini Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

I raced past the kennels each time. So many noses pressed against the chain link. Others cast their pink, brown, black noses downward, their beautiful tails curling inward or twitching a sad little wag as they turned away.

Let me tell you, Lil—I’m here to be borne down on.

But we arrive to find it’s been co-opted by a cocktail bar. / The Moss wants to bounce but we’re already here.

nother time, a couple pressed me to / forgive my family, they said all the best art draws from love, not anger / but I barely heard them over the Frank Ocean song

But for me, Earl’s short poems (sometimes, I’m willing to concede, laid over monotonous beats) are speculative and visionary. They map a modern mind, short in attention, fighting to be audible above our cyber industrial reality—its alienating information storm of iPhone notifications. They take us beyond the day’s meaning-emptied habitual speech.