But for me, Earl’s short poems (sometimes, I’m willing to concede, laid over monotonous beats) are speculative and visionary. They map a modern mind, short in attention, fighting to be audible above our cyber industrial reality—its alienating information storm of iPhone notifications. They take us beyond the day’s meaning-emptied habitual speech.

super impose me neon, berry-tinged / fingertips left smudges across everything I touched.

I was born March 24th, the same day as Harry Houdini, so my family used to take annual trips to the Harry Houdini Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

I raced past the kennels each time. So many noses pressed against the chain link. Others cast their pink, brown, black noses downward, their beautiful tails curling inward or twitching a sad little wag as they turned away.

to bend over whenever. This belief reaches / quietly into their bone marrow.

But we arrive to find it’s been co-opted by a cocktail bar. / The Moss wants to bounce but we’re already here.

The last time I was here I was really in here. I have been here. I know that I have been here. These people are in my home and they are watching my TV.

Let me tell you, Lil—I’m here to be borne down on.