by Ed Skoog

where I

                 like to sit is at the counter

listen to the kitchen gossip

                 like train

whistles reading their teleprompters

the cook’s politics

                  the riverside track’s

straightness

             what funds may become

available for the dobro’s widening slide

the lettercarrier punctuates across the street

                             he knows the door codes

                  twelve miles

a day he walks out of moments

                  rejects

                                    as much

                 as he brings

            And they sing: I had a plan to run away

                  after kindergarten

                                    kept a green pack with selected toys

flashlight

                  a change of shoes

                  only when

I

                 asked if I could run away they said no

so put each object back where it brought

the house joy

                  when it doesn’t matter

some people are called lost

                  but nobody’s

going very far

                  not with this gravity

not at these prices

                  the fig tree is a strangler

cormorants in vile arrangements

stagger the fallen dam

                  I was a child  I go around the houses calling out

names they      respond with various stratagems

they sing our masks slip and in the yard sale

everyone’s a stranger

                  to get through

the day with your button you may

need to forget what’s disappearing and be like those among us who hear

                  do your best to ignore what

even now is fading

                  what falls

outside of your shirtsleeves

                  I’m talking

to you

                  grandfather

                  for the first time and it is so quiet in this nonce space

you can hear me

                 as hummingbird          hears honey

                  I don’t think I can help you

up from the hallway floor with song

                                    the impression that reading about you                 has given me

                 like thought arisen

while reading a travel book

                  vivid spires and dusk-lengthened roads to forested          realms that I’ll never see

                  even if I went

                                    as I cannot go to you

                  nor any word about you

no word would have been kind

but net to catch unintended trawl

                                    as gold intrude

normalest of basins

             and conjured your figure grinds out

they sing something I have been wanting to know

about silence

                 as pertains to love

             and now will turn vine back through lattice

                                    as a garment floating uneven down

                                    ripple and shadow

                  a blossom

frozen in falling

                  a flower shop

opening its drunk rigors at dawn

                  ray undulating

around the sheller’s finally fanged

                  mushroom fire

as cleat

on concrete is tap

                 like one’s remembered

gestures of love make uneven music and faltering play what once gave

push to the grand now slips around

a sea urchin tuned to K-pop

                                    a seaside market’s white linoleum

table gives a little when you lean

                                    against it

             and it’s dawn;

buyer for that night’s special make

  judgement in the dog’s first light

             and yesterday’s stink not fully hosed out

damaging midnight’s property

                  sings at the curb

                  what was it

                  what brought

you to see another’s body and feel desire

what light

                 sings the gobbet sun and shadows

that striped the pool                      or was it the dark

 surprised you entering a bibliography

of lost turns

                                    between wall and gate

                  Is it possible

  short-wave signals

                  range over the ocean

when was it

you first knew you were or were not dead

                                    in the hallway

                  or on the kitchen floor

while the cockatiel squawked

or noticed only its own reflection

in birdcage mirror and nothing outside

or woke from dream unsure

                  your path

through the world might just be a free trial

an ultimate technique        the figure

which Carl said at lunch is

                 like a disc

without space or time to commodify it

I think instead is full of slides and trapdoors

a ladder

                  a song

                  don’t wrap it up

I’ll take it home in my hands

                  even though

we are down to one lane

                  what does holding

the disc which is a void make you forget

the trick with wheels for

                  the meters  run out

                              even the star map

                  infinite presents

a figure that parceling into titles may wall off

  match the wood to the old wood

                  scrap what’s instinctively not part of the design

they sing it this way

                  use the words

about the loss of the figure who would explain

the bark

                 a sap

                 a pith

                          leaves

bright fall

             and how it is to see the nests in winter

             and how it is to smell the burning forests

their

                 ash running away from the mountain—

the absence of what we thought mother was and father was

                  when we were small and needed;

they sing that escape

                  play an exit

a pitcher’s playlist approaching the mound and a bass drum to count the steps

She said the show was still going on

when she left

                  in a wedding dress

echoing coliseum behind her becoming

a moon

                 as it disappears and instead

a departing music arrives under her bare feet;

 palms grow acres above

  confetti in her hair

                  she said human

before I can

pack up my tent and go

                  how does

last night learn morning or it’s morning

time develops

like any interview will

I’m through with burning questions

                                    that was her who walked by

                  ok

did she believe we searched all night

the houses

                  their secrets

                  the past

writhed invisibly its visage

             and where

a rider might come aboard one notices

the birds differ

                  feather in a more

vigorous order

                 as dunes refashion

the beach after a dream of searching

each house for a bride

                  bride one has

always been

                  paused at erotics of last

thought

                  I’m here to kill some part

of myself with either exposure or a shroud and it may take all afternoon

                  It will be

a daily observation

                  a glimpse that will

throw my reflection back

                 like fish I can no more start over

                  or start

new chain of interlocking construction

paper

                  than I can begin my life again

or bring back dead

                  somewhere

in the park’s the fountain that makes you       make the same lesson over again

                 as the bus driver swings down

the lane in the snow

             and misquotes Blake

we throw off one set of snow chains and immediately put on another

   augural twenty-six or so letters that thrush

our names from cities and corner town

                        bars weird compositions left

to rust and grow

                  long to become

their sons and daughters and grow

   long beard in hardware aisles

among boxed nails                       a screw

arranged by its bore

                  from the bridge

   to a no-longer-fashionable neighborhood

          one might let drop a talismanic object

into shallow crawfish ponds   rivuleted between concrete anchors

          broken street

                  water clear

                 as junkyard

windshield                    when it ripples

                  emerges

a kind of voice

                  wave that would become   the suit

             you know is hanging upstairs

  in all possible cedar closets

window open

foraging song