Satellite Dream Dish

Another dream
where I’m in trouble
for being naked.And the NSA
is scoffing at
my latest memoir,
Songs for Getting Drunk in Your Room.

I awake to find it unreal

installed in this beautiful field
with only four seasons,

transmitting messages through space

through substances stickier than the concept of God.

And when I feel this way

I want for my brethren in orbit

to send down their fears and insecurities for a change.

To set them against
the thousands of images
taken from a thousand miles away,

parabolically schemed
to confirm

I’d be insane to say
I ornament the Earth.

Blackberry Picking

Next to the school
the field raised
like a dirt clay mesa,

patches of grass
coughed up
at the baseball diamond,

and though we interrogated
the special-ed kid

the shared popularity
was lost on us.

The girls not getting our jokes,

so going off into the humidity
as close to the road we could be

to pick those wordless fruits
not even a prison architect could’ve rendered.

Charles Mines is a writer based in Decatur, Ga. His stories and poetry have appeared in 3:AM Magazine and The Brussels Review.