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It wasn’t all that long ago I watched a guy drink himself
to death he really died pissed all over himself first all over the couch
later I saw the box cutter in the sink I wish I could have saved him
that same week I saw a giant swallowtail come up from Florida banking like
a boat through the Dakota-like plains west of Galesburg
and I knew I was a little bit singing / dying each minute my hands
clutching the wheel of the mower she was the angel of death that butterfly
And then my hands on the girl who dreamed and dreamed while I kissed her
I watched her circulate in her clothes Then I start thinking
I’m not capable of thinking I’m just beating the wind with my nuts
I tell you from there things get foggy like many arrows whistling
through rain a confluence of vanishing points As a child I lived near a hollow
scooped out in the dunes I watched the dying alewives
float under my balls while the hair sprouted around my
nipples and my spine grew long as a vine strangling a phone pole
As long as I can remember the trees
clung to the cliffs of sand Nothing begins with me Nothing stays the same
Nothing gropes its way home Those days and now These snap dragons
and tulips marigolds I ate a basket of purple beans last night
grew them in the damp arbor sun of the late afternoon
when you throw them in boiling water they turn green
it’s a miracle of alchemy they were crunchy because I was so hungry
I went to buy my lover a goldfish I think of minnows shifting
over a moonlit bed I think of hot water cutting grease off a knife
I clotheslined a bastard once he was holding a beer in a cup
it was a long time ago there was an old wood stove smoking in the corner
of a room it was full of burning hickory
the ground outside was littered with fresh dogwood petals
I reached my fingers out for a second because I thought it was snowing
I left the fish in its bag he didn’t die but almost
Tom she said Rick? the T.V. was airing a show about weather
All I could see was a shutter torn off a house and blown
across an empty street one lamp was on I got
out of there quickly I started thinking about my life the way it sometimes
sparkled like a blue gill caught in the sun or grew dark
like the rain in a yard full of lumber and bricks I could see my breath
I peeled off a culvert I listened to the hum of a street light
it kept getting later and later I walked all night
At dawn I saw that giant swallowtail slowly fanning her black wings
in my driveway like a candle burning in an empty church
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