TODAY THERE’S A SUBSTITUTE WE’LL BE WATCHING A FILM STRIP

For how many nights I’ve dreamt myself floating through the railyard trying to fathom all that’s been derailed—children in their athletic wear crying out in the dark, a train signaling in the distance, two long blasts, one short, one long, meaning, “Train is approaching public crossings at grade”—and waking only to find the cars uncoupled and overturned, all manner wandering down near the track, volunteers or survivors I can’t tell, blood and soot, hand-in-hand, from here they all look the same. “Right now we’re living in misery,” says a man who can’t pay to pave the substandard road outside his house. There are all sorts of uniforms for sale along the boulevards from conflicts we thought long past, all these vitrified surfaces laid to trip us up, all the rivers wearing at their sleeves. There are waves of fire at the bank, the chime saying come on in, and the blast that says clear the way. I’m watching over an abandoned train station packed with children browsing through racks of rusting toys and ill-fitting dresses, kicking at things that may or may not blow up in their faces. I’m looking for the valve to ease the pressure. The promotional t-shirts are screaming, “TODAY’S THE DAY, KEEP YOUR HAT ON!” Squeeze the trigger if you have to but understand, I never learned to smile for the camera. Did you?

COREOLIS EFFECT

1.

The skinny girl in glasses takes her warmup and steps to the plate. A swing, and a miss, and she steadies her gaze on the boy at the mound, the patchy path leading off to the periphery. How far to first, in cartwheels and bird feathers, the safety to be bought there? A choppy swing and a foul into the trees, and the robins sing, cheerily, cheer up, cheer up, cheerily, cheer up. Then a new pitch and a swing like summer rain, like a train finding its station, and it’s a blast through the infield and the platted ground folds in on itself, sun buzzing among the trees, twisted by a coursing wind, ancient and invisible. The children fly aimless into their melodies, burnt orange and light. The word that means bases loaded and the fences coming down.

2.

But there’s the bell and the coach’s whistle, and they pound their gloves, toss their bats at the backstop, and head in to learn the measures that will determine their rise and fall, the beauty of parabolic flight. Locked and loaded. We defy gravity only as a means to lose ourselves in the fraying end of its yawn. Now the bombs are in the air and they’re set for forget-me-not. For the lost cause. For 412 particles per million. For wild girls growing among the Horseweed and Buttercup, among the pens, among the next class already warming up, taking their places, readying their arms to throw, their bodies for the projectile’s soft cousin. At the plate now, another slender shoot seeks her arc through the chattering mass, and beyond. This is no call for submission. This is the angle at which the diamond opens to its play.

RIPARIAN ZONE

The signal / these specimens

at the crossing / grass clippings / glass owls /

a succession of short bursts /

copper yanked behind mirrors /

and swamped / the walls /

There’s only so much

one can say / “The whistle

is sounded in an attempt

to attract attention

to the train.”

***

What have I learned / behind the mill /

that you didn’t already know /

there are blanks all over

the map and / down the hill /

the tour guide says / don’t jump /

into the stream / that grinds there /

a tableau / might get us across /

a river whose name / it seems /

no one has been tending / I hold

the door / for the stranger /

on his phone / into an expanse /

we can’t fathom

***

These kids / these bodies built /

for the end of days / these creatures /

“designed to enchant rather than /

control overtly” / washed up /

after the storm / knocking /

at the window / the last reflection /

having lost / we choose /

our footing / all the promises /

the endless fall / the lost ones /

in safety green / and shot /

into the fields

Previous

Next