I hold the bare buttocks in my palm:
wan-white wax, honey-pour, ring
and dirty and gray. I plan missiles
on the grain of the coffee table: atlas
of closed left to be empty on the branch.
I think of tragedy more than poetry.
A colonist who ran away from my neighbor’s asylum
leaving behind a flightless generation
and then expired in the field. Poor room
in Lincoln where my mother died, she went out,
with a bullet in the head. Nobody wants it
place like that but I: yellow-changing
and nicotine, blinds NTA pulled down
against shattering glass. In memory
of images on Google Maps that I’m looking at
its slow decay. Walls left to bow
and bleach, the front is full
and weeds where now wild bees
must love to fly, to blow seeds,
shouting at the bluestem grass, building
sticky hives behind rotting wood.
