City of needles
I cannot walk the park and miss its crop of needles. I cannot reach for fish behind glass without scales impaling my wrists. Those trees I admired, the ones syringe-like in winter. Yes, needles.
When I pick up refuse, I wear impermeable gloves. When I trim, my blades dull on spiny metals. I removed a pin from a red bird’s wing, a bird not originally red. Towers rain showers of powder.
There is snow on the grass in May. A child was taken to the infirmary having tried to taste falling flakes. So many luxury cars with tires that never wear flat. So many heals and ankles reinforced with steel.
And iron. The iron red of a woman’s lips; the iron red under a man’s eyes. Iron red foliage on a maple in the park. Today, I received a contact high when I admired a spruce. The tree had ankles reinforced with steel.
The mayor is calm. He says we’re getting along. Workers work longer shifts, allowed to collect time and a half. There is a rust iron redness in their spines. There is a rust from the grindstone on their shoulders.
The plows come out in May and remove all the flowers. The operators see stars. A kinglet is crowned monarch. Somehow, so many can pay the inflated rent. People watch films while cybertrucks drive them to work.
Prayer meeting
It’s official.
All the boys I grew up
with have come to Canada.
The streets, the schoolyards
back home are filled with girls
fix slides and swings, replace
the watermains
The boys,
they’ve come to my house
We drink Walkerville Rye
and pray, asking for our Messiah
to come
To part Lake Erie
and let us return to America.
While down south
the girls rebuild the playground.
Bedtime
A bureaucrat talks to his oyster plate.
Comic genius, he writes poems about trees
losing their leaves in fog.
His brother,
a Shriner, paints
mustaches on national monuments.
These men, in their quest for authenticity
have a cousin who composes atonal lullabies
record companies market as bedtime stories
To children who fall asleep
gripping the hands of their nannies.
Did you hear the one about a chicken
the size of a bison on the loose in Hoboken,
New Jersey? No one said he could win, but he clucks with conviction.
Now he’s the mayor.
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