Drawn to the window by sound
like rain beginning drop by slow drop,
I find only the plock of grasshoppers
thumping vinyl siding, a crowd
of brown hibiscus nodding like idiots
in dry wind. I have been a long time
dry, & my rebar is beginning
to show. I’m looking at a long tin shed
like a broken-backed mule, three empty
cans of Coors Lite floating
on the Queen Anne’s lace that lines
the drainage ditch. Down the road
the balding veterinarian walks
through double glass doors out his clinic,
stands by the mailbox, smoking
in his burgundy scrubs. It’s almost
11:00. The sun has been dragged
like an old stump from its socket & nearly
halfway across a tinny sky. Cars move
through thin light and are gone.
All morning a dead friend has been rising
closer to the surface of my mind, like a splinter
left to work its own slow way out of flesh.
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