The 575 Kilometre Breakfast
This poem appears in The Love of a Good Man.
Of course you must assess attraction!
Of course you must obsess!
The fire hydrant in front of the bank
wears its traffic cone like a dunce cap,
but does so happily.
I have forgotten Jerusalem.
I have returned to Constantinople.
Upon crossing a battletorn ridge, I sight
Freedom Way underscored by Freedom Bridge
and know where desire might lie.
In these, my disunited states,
I surprise even myself when, forced upon
brief relief in a gas station latrine,
I follow the scent of dung from four young men
who take turns in the room.
Their leavings, I note, do not disgust me.
They are sweet-scented, nary a drop of blood, no tears shed.
At Kalama, water. Couples perambulating as if
the world wasn't churning out its own funeral march. The sun shone
upon the wastewater treatment plant. I felt proud.
On the petticoats of Oregon, time itself distended.
For a moment, I thought I could bite my own tail.
For a moment, the Devil pushed out his asphalt knees, and there,
between the pallid thighs of country, I thought I saw sun
and reached out beyond the parted trees, ready to bind the cross—
But the rough HOOOOOOOOOOON of a truck in the left lane,
Returned me to my task of ploughing the dirt and raising dust.