1.
Locusts
eat Ohio alive.
June is the first
month in bank
robbery season.
Silky
tornado
nestles in
the trash.
Angles of
neckties act
as compasses
for flight.
2.
You will
disappear.
You will feel
the need
to disappear.
4.
In an abandoned lot,
a slow conglomerate
of green tongues
devour a dead bird.
5.
Fill in the blank:
“This new-century
sky is _________.”
a) Noctilucent.
b) Nacreous.
c) Lenticular.
d) Unidentifiable
as fluoride.
e) All of the above.
The sky is
a cinder-
block smashed by
hydrogen
and moth-
light.
7.
Wreckage
is a kind
of question.
It asks you
to reconsider
your inventory.
8.
Broken jackknife?
Decoder ring?
Come back.
Milk-white set
of marbles?
Boiled shark
jaws? Sloop-load
of clams? Antique
copper broach?
Please, come back.
This wrist-
watch won’t tick,
won’t heirloom,
but disappoint.
9.
In its abandoned lot,
the dead bird is gone.
Green tongues twist
slowly—
memory
a thing
that devours
things
things.
10.
Spare licks
of lightning
pepper the pan-
handle.
Trees teethe
in a locust
zone.
11.
Come back.
12.
Construction
workers wear
federal orange
vests, smoke
cigarettes in
the noon haze
the street’s
ceiling. Cars
run on boiled
bones. Smog
rolls in like
a prehistoric ghost
to slumber. At
night our cities
are swallowed
in swamps
of orange light.
Ghosts, federal
as bone, boil
around us.
13.
According to
local sources,
a well-kept lawn
is the simplest
indicator of
economic stability.
burglars operate
under the night’s
braille blanket.
Conversation is
a politic of trivia.
A newspaper is
a politic of a tree.
14.
In the beginning
atoms collided
like German
consonants.
Everything
else stewed in
the oil fields of
Los Angeles.
15.
And ghosts,
federal as bone,
boil still around us.
Already heat has broke
loose of its zoo.
Children
chew tar, kick cans, call
strangers collect.
They drown
the radioman in his radio.
17.
Come back. Come back,
children. Come back
and see the Midwest’s
checkerboard from
30,000 feet, the smoke
of industry leering like
syrup over the river,
alming the sky of life.