“Letter with No Daredevil in Sight”
I’m not a courageous person by nature.
I might spike my hair in the morning but I’ll wash it this afternoon.
Niagara Falls seems like an eternity from here.
I spent all summer inside, walked a track in my carpet until I was underground.
My veins are a tightrope waiting for some kind of fall.
I spoke your name only in secret.
There is no fireplace big enough for all of the ash I hold.
What is Canada to a man like me?
When meeting someone new: at first, they always look like someone else you know,
Gorge yourself on the words I leave in my wake, if you want.
They grab your hand and claim it’s nice to meet you. They insist.
(I checked with the local barrelman. He said they’re fresh out for the season.)
I’m not sure I believe them anymore.
I never wanted to be known for what I said more than what I do, but here we are, Claire.
“Letter Suffering Cardiac Arrest”
When you wander sand, and I ramble concrete,
we are not reachable by mail or by phone—
attempts at meaning mean less here.
This world has to grow bigger: a hundred miles
is not enough; a century could not contain
the time. If I could shrink into nothing I would
still be too large, but I could make my home
in a stranger’s wall—listening—or in a needle’s eye. Or:
I am become a giant’s chest pain, shunting health out
of clear veins. Keep the giant alive, or I will crawl under
his fingernails and gather behind your ribs, where my work
begins afresh once I’ve heard the signal: two quick knocks
then one more; the Westminster Chimes playing your sinuses;
your breath erratic as my mind; my body erased.
“Landscape in Landlines”
Crows on the arm of a telephone pole
sitting on a lamp stark against
the blue: the many ears
of some unnameable beast.
The world can be a foreign place.
One swoops down,
grazing my car’s mirror
before returning back to its perch,
a familiar den made strange
by distance, by the act
of leaving only to return.
I crank the wheel left
and they all disappear,
no longer holding court
in reflection. No longer real,
no more than a vacant space,
a memory, a flash of color
in your windshield then nothing
but clear skies and the road ahead.
But somewhere, a cloud still circling.
“Flyover Country”
The landlord—one hand resting on a wicker armrest, the other buried in his white dog’s mane—
said if I missed rent he’d take a bat to my legs and my back.
My roommates—from Missouri and North Carolina, respectfully—took a bat to my legs
and my back and didn’t stop until I moved out.
Always, road construction on I-40 through Arkansas: traffic delays or standstills—
one time diverted for over an hour because a tractor-trailer cut the road in half.
I, too, am amazed by skyscrapers, by cities that should not exist but do.
I, too, go home and want to leave again.
I run and run back again. The cars ignore me and my neighbor’s pet. We have
sore paws and wagging tongues and nothing else.
Story songs need somewhere to run from, and something to run toward.
The singer’s song gilds every trash-heap in the city.
The coast approaches every year. Soon, no country to fly over. Break states right
in two. Cut out the mother tongue. Sing of Babel.
“Opening Day”
Nothing reminds me that I am alive
and embodied like a sunburn, the subtlety
of its sneak, how it finds my skin like death,
or love. I know this, too, shall fade like love,
or death. Never playing catch with your father
really messed you up, didn’t it?
It didn’t. A bird explodes 30 feet, 3 inches
from someone’s father and someone’s son.
Something like hot dogs and funnel cake
will complete this day. You see a churchgoer
with an armful of beers and pretend not to.
A diving catch means everyone is on their feet.
High-fives are exchanged like currency: the good
received is human contact and comradery,
which until 1989, was an act of treason
in these parts. When you were born, grown men
were preparing to assassinate a thousand
other men. Want to know a secret? We all
do. The highlight reel is spectacular. The grass
is so, so green. The groundskeeper should
be proud. We should all be proud, and we are.
Our bodies, in this crowd, look like a single
monster, thousand-mouthed. As we devour
the field, our hulking breadth glistens.