Everything Dies

One friend said check this out
and it was his own vomit in his hands.

One friend locked herself in a box of water
for a complicated escape display. She didn’t

escape. We held a memorial.
Confetti fell down on our eyes

the way rice does at some weddings.
Which seems like a tremendous waste.

One friend made the switch
from cigarettes to water vapor

and she developed an unrelated cancer.
One friend said hey I’ll be right back

but he wasn’t. Now he haunts
all the apartments he couldn’t afford

in life. Big pianos make us feel
exploited. Our paychecks

even more so.
When we weren’t looking

one friend got really into noise
and enrolled in a Ph.D. program.

On graduation day she climbed
into the commencement speaker’s mouth

the way a lizard disappears
behind a rock in a cartoon desert.

By Matthew Kosinski

Biography:

My name’s Matthew Kosinski. I’m a socialist and poet from New Jersey and an MFA candidate at The New School.