Gets Dark So Early Late

The dead have the whole city to think with
the fla-vor-ice tube the whole tongue cherry red.
Trapped below the lake, the slow sharp breath,
the mottle, the dogskin, the fiberglass, the uncertain
waterlight’s advance. This is the uniformity
we imagined the future with. This is a future that came late
to the upper Midwest, but when it did, set gray panels
in tan brick and chirred with the whippoorwill
trapped in the quivering Walgreen’s door. Will
this city ever look like anything more
than dying on television, gunshot in …

Lauren Gives Me Directions | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Lauren Gives Me Directions

“Make a left at the second park,
Because you will come across two parks;
The first one is smaller, and there’s a little courtyard in the middle
With an old …

[In the ocean with my brother, I wonder]

In the ocean with my brother, I wonder
if I should make my same old walking
into the ocean joke. “Whelp. I guess
I’ll just keep going. Goodbye.” …

Landlocked

The air above this man-made
reservoir turns violent
pink each afternoon. This is a tune

on a guitar I can barely
play. I’ve built
a forest of grief and you

aren’t allowed …

Carolina clay

Our house leaned and pitched in strong winds. The tin roof
a watering can for black snakes wintering in the attic;

the kitchen ceiling had one-tile-in-from-the-wall painted
for ten years, …

The Marine

Sundays my father made us chorizo
we still begged to skip church
four bad kids in line for communion,
recanting silence
seeing the backs of our neighbors, the lint on …