by Marc McKee
Proceeding with delicacy is a cultivation
sayeth the ginger. Sometimes I think
each year has its own hand
writing an epistle into the calamity quilt
of our consistency. And we are dolls
made of correspondence with time
but hey! Look at that shopping cart
go. The haught slung from the sun
hits and passes through
and makes a shadow and a glint
and something rises up in you
like words coming up off a page,
like the appellative scars on a tree trunk
bsppicking up their own knife. Is it any wonder
you find yourself on this bus, twilight indigo
spleaking all over you, and in your hand
what? Doesn’t it feel like
a tiny jar of teeth? What is medicine?
I am imagining what it is like
to be even older, to have
what is strung together for you
to play into a recognizable shape
begin a slow farewell. There is something delicate
about a charred house,
the way it tells you what it was,
over and over.