Lorna Grove<\/p>\n
This is as far as street view goes.
\nNew green chainlink swelled by greenery.
\nSky-coloured puddles network into a pond\u2019s skyscape.
\nA warning sign encircles a family
\nof slashed and circled pictograms. Analogy is enclosure.<\/p>\n
I am looking for where the woods have the furthest to go
\nbefore hitting road. An interior, off-path,
\ntoo negligible to plot. To verify
\na former nursery\u2019s site from a scent
\nmistaken for it. Green tie wires twined vines fast-<\/p>\n
forwarding to reddish green, greenish red, as if to prevent
\nwhat they were nurturing. Each step extends
\na lapse in visibility and measure
\nthat must back onto landfill or lot. Encroaching
\nhammering. A runnel\u2019s traffic. Yet, in the midst of it, <\/p>\n
woolly seed stuff matts the undergrowth
\nlike afterbirth. Inscrutably visored waterbirds pad a bank
\ntide-marked with foam. The litter is synthetic,
\nhistoric. All ways resolve to exits I know.
\nI depend on their not being connectable. <\/p>\n
It is always an overcast three in the afternoon.
\nNo need for sky to compass.
\nThe seed, the fruit, the trash have left no scent,
\nno lacunae in the record, nowhere from where
\nthere is no way back to the road.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Cape Cod Days<\/p>\n
Happy to assume the stucco frontages
\nof this wedding-cake architecture
\nhide a better deal, a sky pale
\nas a Post-It. And the weather turns,
\nflecks a collar, raises it; dots
\na blackbird\u2019s plumage with iridescence
\nfugitive as snow along the north-eastern corridor.
\nIn Back Bay, on Boylston, or Harris
\ndown in Providence, in fact
\nall down the seaboard, there are options
\nto slip back into versions of ourselves
\nthat could mount the slope, intuit goings-on
\nyard for yard, name the feral animal
\nreiterating its hoarse, two-note offer
\nfrom a clearing in the woods. The clouds
\nare take-out bags, the bags sheeted ghosts,
\nhandles raised to signal another
\nharmless emergency, or exercise
\ntheir blithe, informed choices. Plaid shirts balloon
\nalong the avenue like CEOs on sabbatical,
\nprofessors coming up for tenure
\nor early retirement to suburbs like these,
\nprimed to denounce their neo-
\nliberal spread with renovations of a white
\nthat could colour-card highlights
\non the water and wing the Amtrak swept past
\nas far up as Portland.
\nI never made it to Bangor though.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Arpeggio
\ni.m. Bill Lynch<\/p>\n
It circulates out of a place
\nof longer days, rooms of luxurious breadth
\nin which I\u2019m being measured for a bespoke suit.
\nIts source is still on the tip of my tongue.
\nIt soundtracks a vortex of exhausted cars, stalked fruit
\nand plumed factory chimneys:
\nthe pattern on a plate, a fish-eyed kaleidoscope\u2019s <\/p>\n
symmetries. It loops before middle C
\nresolves an aerial sweep of the geometric city
\nas futurism, not vertigo. Cloud mass grisailles
\nwhat it shadows. Anxious women puff on cigarettes
\nunder awnings, in office doorways,
\nwhile children scamper, out of breath, from black-and-white
\nto colour, as though fleeing a catastrophe.<\/p>\n
Perhaps it has something to do with an evening last week,
\nsub-zero and falling, I stepped off a bus
\nto flout the day\u2019s imminent foreclosure.
\nCrimped glass the colour of pee
\nblurred the glow of wattage off black-lacquered stairs
\nup to a room vivid with neons,
\ndisowning the outdoors, but investing <\/p>\n
three sash windows with a white luminescence
\nalthough all the snow was gone by then.
\nI could have stayed forever, tired as I was.
\nSun pinwheeled through foliage,
\nsparrows cocked their heads
\nand greyhounds swung their muzzles into woods
\nthat were no more than the wood they were painted on, <\/p>\n
a depthlessness offset by the preternatural clarity of the windows.
\nThe place they inhabited was all the room was not
\nbut testified to. Solemn
\nas ancient Egyptian cats, they were executed
\nwith an economy I would call Japanese. The glaze
\nbeading a painted vase might have triggered the scale\u2019s ascent
\nto where it lost its thread, like that day\u2019s end, <\/p>\n
to mist, exhaust fumes, the patter of feet
\nunder trees strung with Christmas lights no one has taken down.
\nA typist working late in a room along the corridor.
\nThe slovenly rap of branches whipping on a bus
\nthat dawdles as it picks up speed.
\nSomeone descending the staircase, braced for cold,
\nresigned to what\u2019s next. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lorna Grove This is as far as street view goes. New green chainlink swelled by greenery. Sky-coloured puddles network into a pond\u2019s skyscape. A warning sign encircles a family of slashed and circled pictograms. Analogy is enclosure. I am looking for where the woods have the furthest to go before hitting road. An interior, off-path, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[327,328],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n