Artistic Ambition Gone Awry

Let’s workshop this poem about how one might approach killing a repeat burglar in duty-to-retreat states that outlaw burglar boobytraps and use of deadly force in situations where one could have fled

scent of the day: Lillipur, by Tiziana Terenzi. An introspective incense fragrance that transports me to a mountaintop monastery, Lillipur starts with tart olibanum and absinthe (licoricey star anise, bitter wormwood) whose numbing quality is amplified by Sichuan pepper and cinnamon—the dry down, whose apothecary thyme and grassy galbanum and peppery carnation preserves the green and spicey bitterness of the opening, quieting too soon into a tobacco-tonka caramel skin scent with smokey whisps of springtime woods (cashmere, birch, cedar) that do not interfere with the through-line: velvety-Pepsi frankincense bordering on too polite and graceful.

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Artistic Ambition Gone Awry

In a duty-to-retreat state
that bans burglar boobytraps even 
for window repeats, preempt

post-hoc suspicion
with scripts, footage, receipts, grant requests
for the iPhone horror

(starring you) where
the tripwire deer bow 
was for a window-entering zombie dummy.

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