After the TV, tablet, no-name
bags, and Gigi’s sapphire ring,
I thought I was cunning
pushing cash halfway
through the paper feed
of a broken printer.
It was the last place
he would look, but he
found the money and ran off
with the printer too.
He said he was born
to find it, an octopus
who can find its way
out of a jar with the lid
screwed shut. I watch a video
of the experiment.
All amorphous color writhing,
spasmodic turning
of the lid, a burst
of tentacles, and then out dumps
the pillow of a head.
It’s like the Big Bang,
but not, because the cliché
about heroin is true; no high
is like that first galactic-skinned
expansion. He stole until
we had nothing left to pawn.
No one had to die for me
to see what was never mine.
The controller fixed its
laser on a vacant wall.
A knot of cables in the corner
charged the air.
