Dusk takes dictation from the houses.
Sometimes sobs and sometimes screams—
laughter, too, though it doesn’t settle like the others
into the hollows of the Virgin Mary’s face.
In her concrete gown, she’s standing by
the satellite dish absorbing for the trailer on the corner,
wearing shoulder pads of Asian pears I stole some of
before the windfall fell. When the dog
lifts his leg to soil a withered rose I say Good boy.
Nightshade vines overtake the house of the widow,
their flowers turned into yellow berries
that there are no birds in nature idiot enough
to mistake for food.
after Dick Barnes