The sand before me like water, fluid and holy
under the cratered crown nearly
half-awake, circling
as I draw the one way I know—stick
figures in a backdrop scenery, thick-
headed and content, wheeling
psalms of birds, wide-sloping M’s
grouped in permanent murmur. I don’t bother
with the sun’s face, bare in the upper
left corner of the page. I’ve made
a habit out of hoarding ornaments,
given them their own orbit like the russet
ichor dashed with cinnamon
I choke down every morning and afternoon.
The city’s puncture-prone underbite nips
the sky, consuming the bodies
above—thunderheads, billboards
notched, alive in the glow of that always-
diurnal square. There’s been talk lately of
irreversible chemistry, an acceptable stand-in
for cure among believers and experts
in and on the subject of Zoloft-sponsored
serotonin. A first weaning is possible.
Do not bother with a second.
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