A Map of Your Small Town
Sometimes there's nothing to write about, no news
the world wants to let go of, the sun held back,
answering machine aglow with its red emptiness,
even the house refusing its stoplight flash, its groan.
The cardinals and their babies flee deep in
some wooded otherwhere and traffic's taken a hike.
Mother said we'd need brass balls and sweet luck when
we found roaming what we did best, and dreaming.
Parked in the mental hospital's lot to talk,
we watched shadows move, dusk bled to black, and you
wanted to bolt like a shy horse, and no place
ahead called, secret, down roads I couldn't guess.
Joy flickered in lights on, off. Phones kept ringing.
EMILY HIESTAND
Large, with cheese, to go
High in the spring maple's froth
floats a box of blue light,
an Oz shining forth from an upper story
with tongues, fires, and catastrophes:
the "Eye on America" show.
A good city tree it is, whose branches
hold emanations, new rains,
and moiled hydrocarbons.
Her old arabesque of limbs
and volumes justly frames
the western sky, now closing
in a color just shy of thalo,
shading to dimitt's marine.
