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“If the flowers on my desk/ aren’t watered,” writes Chelotti in his debut, “they will continue/ posing questions.” In recording questions, confusion, attempts at explanation (“I would like this/ explanation, but there is no explanation”), Chelotti finds his shtick. “I am looking out over/ one of the first real gray/ days of autumn listening/ to a podcast in which/ these two men are talking about/ the phenomenon of ball lightning,” it starts. Often deadpan in delivery and filled with up-to-date technological references, these poems, associative as Google-chats, work to uncover the comic and the precious in the potentially meaningless: “Sometimes I think about Frank O’Hara/ but most of the time/ I think about paying/ the bills. I find myself saying c’est la guerre/ against my will.” Though the poems’ sparely surreal hooks risk losing their potency over a full-length collection (by the time we reach a the first line “When I come home/ there is a lion waiting,” we don’t really blink an eye), Chelotti’s more condensed poems (“Penitent Days,” “White Sun,” “Grace”), and the title poem, are gripping and surprising. “The days surround us,/ pressure us into/ thinking there might/ not be enough time/ to say all we haven’t said,” but Chelotti has gotten a remarkable start. (Apr.)