Just south of the sea, Naveen
shows us the new library—

a bust of Alexander, an impossible
swoop of steel, the planetarium

roof & defunct scripts squiggling
like mosquito larvae across Aswan granite

She points to a mural of Romans setting fire
to Egyptian ships as gusts raged

inland, torching the harbor’s horded wisdom
& says The blaze wasn’t as bad as what went with it

Love, will our tender infinity billow, too, into space?
The clematis bursting from your stare

your shirt pouch stuffed with peppers, fingers
snapping now! as our boys bell kick down a path, away from us—

Astronomers say there are more stars
than grains of sand & I worry my verse pays

ill tribute to our galaxy of incalculable witness
Are we only real when observed

like blue giants or slipper orchids?
Are we carried inside one another

like ancient tomes or injured birds?
Naveen fixes her headscarf & says

The Library of Alexandria was originally a temple
which is fitting, since you & I, & all

that we have shared, like anything holy—
cannot be contained
Word Problems  

If ^X is born to Bahá’ís perfecting pilaf & prayer in an 80s suburb made of water pistols &
beer, what will ^X call home?

If ^X’s mystical father swallows ^X’s mother & eviscerates ^X’s brother, at what age will ^X
unmute?

Reduce utopia/narcissism to simplest terms

If ^X’s lived experience = ½ Hubble, ½ wallflower, calculate the volume of his loneliness

If the house on Nims Avenue is Babel & every tongue a 1-year delay, how high will ^X’s
silence tower?  

Whereas ^X is both a group of 1 & the safest, tallest person in every elevator, determine
the square root of his privilege

Whereupon ^X is raised to reject whiteness (because whiteness is a lie & a missile), how
often will he misplace the key to his bones?

If there is no standard for ^X’s deviation, is he nothing?
If you find ^X’s story inscrutable, will you google Bahá’í Faith or ask ^X for the algorithm?

As the pendulum locked for 400 years finally & victoriously swings, should ^X wait for it
to include him, seek pendulum prime, or study the grammar of trees?

Given ^X’s heart is a polynomial, find a world his asymptote will someday touch

If home is only a legal pad, an airport, her morning chest, find the quotient of ^X’s
solitude

Whereas ^X was built as an exit ramp, find the probability of forward motion

EVERY DRAFT KINGS AD ENDS WITH A NUMBER

to call if you’ve bet your kid’s college fund
on a late-night field goal     No fantasy anymore—

just water cooler princes ledger-deep in black
boy speed & cotton-picked passes in red zones    

Once the fun morphed into trans-Atlantic déjà vu
auction block bidding on the internet

I fled, left the auctioneer chanting monotone lots
for white-collar wrists, black faces on sticks

waved like plantation fans, like back-in-the-day pencil
scratch under parasol crop savior enslaver

beneath a counterfeit Christian sun     The site blocks punts
& pop-up conscience for one Old Hickory a month

& Manbun asks Can we only draft dudes who won’t take a knee?
His laughter smells of muskets    

Good luck with that says Mr. IPA, They all do that shit now
I stuffed my old jerseys into plastic bags for Goodwill

because the Draft Kings motto, The Game Within the Game
is America, is congress in a mancave, is runaway slave patrol

lying through the teeth & checking teeth is hard
when the merchandise is hot, speculator fever eager

to pinch limbs, clock combine sprints & eschew undue risk
Because nobody balls like the Confederacy, I mean SEC, NCAA

I mean NFL, you see—chattel charts packed with boys from
good stock, strong as bulls lured by cash capes & scholarship olés

enough to fix their someday knees & Sunday necks snapped
for home crowd sky box martini profits    

O Draft Kings, o heirs of grotesque fortune—
what a world you build on others’ backs