What’s that magic doin’ when you’re not tryin’ to do it? This is that.
There is this catch in seeing
called the look back
and it may come of a shirt starching
doughy gaze out a windowpane
within. When a train goes
domestic spindles make vibrations
a more possible end.
A prophet is running a shrink wrapper
in a warehouse on tobacco avenue.
Way across above his Piedmont,
in the mountains where stars resume,
some forlorn boy has stripped his clothes.
Naked in a meadow, hopping through fog,
eating milk and cornbread on Waterrock Knob.
Long in the tooth and null in the head.
Bird’s nest soup, swinging from the rough,
deprivation is a privilege.
To sit at a table in a bar
next to someone’s wife’s
sterling education, a Mozart
machine for the womb.
Might just say I, I,
I made a little dam—
ham, roll…
met at Pat’s, went to fast food,
all the trees are gone
behind the tombstones’
chawbacon.
Darkness flows into my mouth,
the parking lot across the road
where grandfather’s champion
gardens were.
Proust: in a loop, like trying to pull a little
girl out of water.
