Garbage Night
It is Thursday night.
It is garbage night.
The trash is my old clothes
and my old clothes are slipping through my hands.
My hands are a box full of flies.
The flies are taking off with my hair –
look! I am bald. I am my mother’s truck engine.
I am the space the deer left sleeping in the ferns.
I am 7:52 in the evening.
See, the sun has already set
and the dog is crying to go out. Am I her, too?
Her nose raised, twitching, into the evening air?
My parents are getting old.
I don’t like to say that out loud, but it’s true.
The dog is old, too.
I am rubbing the dog’s legs.
I am a car full of empty coffee cups –
see, I can’t bring myself to dump them.
They remind me of yesterday.
I am all the days that the sky
has broken clear and cold,
spilling oranges across the dawn-line.
I am the Ohio line.
I am West Side Road after all the tourists
have left for the day I am
laying myself down on the asphalt
to watch the stars come out
in real soaring spires above my head
until the dog begins her howling.
I am waking all the days.
I am the ferns, and I keep space
for the coffee cups. I am
peeling my long body
off asphalt, and gone round back
to feed the chickens.