The Lights Are Coming On in a Small Industrial City
The moon drops into a slashed and decaying porcupine.
No, it is merely an old plank of rusty nails
the fishy moon drops into.
A five-legged dog slinks along the street
in quest of a nugget and he finds one.
His hide is illuminated and he smells like Nyquil.
A toddler cursed into the rising dawn.
A toddler balled his fist and cursed like a little fuck.
Like a wedge of cranes, cereal bowls
spread over the picnic tables.
I could not find the time, did not know where to look.
Railroad engineers kept peeling lemons into empty cups.
At the pemmican plant in the distance,
a friend counted figs while arranging the bones of rats.
Countless sticks of deodorant
were perched on the rims of countless aquariums
and every once in a while one or two plunked in.
A boy lifted a small, red, poison dreamcatcher.
Racks of antlers dotted the road.
It is dusk.
A miner slipped, envisioning his wife’s wrists.