In Virginia they have their drawl and their dogwood,
they’ve got tactile humidity and a history
that’s slavish. They love ideas in Virginia. Virginia’s a person
who loves to stall at the malls. She doesn’t like
to pay shipping. She doesn’t like to drive around town
to save few cents on gas. Am I being too specific? Is there no
Virginia in you? The dancing torso that knows nothing
about tiny sensors they implant to make you want things?
There’s a hole in the self: you can’t throw a penny down deep enough.
They still have dirt floors in Virginia. Real other-side-
of-the-tracks folks who shine your sweat and mop.
In Virginia we bash mailboxes with baseball bats,
we shake our catalpa pods and we don’t talk to stranglers
in that shanty town where we grew up separately.
Virginia, you are my girlfriend, lover, partner, wife,
the one I come back to late at night,
whose fluttery eyelids ship her off to some sleepy island
where a mountain ridge insanely hovers.