We Can Smell Invisible
by dirk michener

Sometimes people can smell ghosts – or god or a miracle happening
Moving around doing invisible business
Producing it’s own rankness between sulfur and plasma
Much like lightening- invisibility strikes
It’s a little funky
Like baking cookies and boiling down cabbage.

I came home one day and the apartment smelled like garbage
& I says, I says “what’s that awful smell?”
& Reed says “it’s my food. But it rhymes with garbage”
…later that night we made a special trip to the dumpster behind Einstein’s
to get a double bagged bundle of day old bagels
you see, they have to throw them away
otherwise they’d have to mark the price down
then everyone on the strip would stop buying fresh bagels
in lieu of saving a dollar
which is smart, on the parts of both parties

Invisibility is a chemical reaction
Like AIDS or bombs or Dr. Pepper or schizophrenia or spontaneous combustion
There’s a time and a place and person or a people
When all the factors are in order
The unseen mathematics begin rounding and rounding
Multiplying and dividing

The next thing you know you’re about to get laid
And you realize the pheromone spray is paying off
And the breath spray is doing its job
And the hairspray has remained wholly steadfast if only a little flaky

You take off your watch
You roll on your latex
And disappear

Your partner suddenly looks up
At no one
And you think
-why is she looking at me like that
why is she looking through me.