The new education
building was beautiful
because it was reminiscent
of friends’ houses past.
Fond, albeit naive, memories
of stone suburbs and finished basements and iPod stereo systems playing easy listenin’
trite popular rock n’ roll music to the smell of toaster muffins,
some Pillsbury brand I can’t remember the name of and didn’t bother to then
because my mom or dad (for different reasons) couldn’t be persuaded to buy boxed, branded
items (usually, and until an Aldi came to town), and don’t bother to know now because
it’s probably better and cooler to not know.  

We fear what we think we know about what we actually don’t know.
I learned that recently and it is popping up everywhere.
Popping up like processed delicious memories out of new clean toasters.
Where are all the crumbs? Where is the crumb life?
I’ll ask that if I ever return.
There once was a statue of a short Italian chef with a mustache and a tray attached to his stone hand, for letters, I assumed, and if I ever go back I’ll also ask: is that for letters?

See the truth is that there was depth.
There was depth but what bothered me I mean really made me uncomfortable
was that it was hidden and wiped off the counter and swept up so to speak
with perhaps, someone else’s hands.
The depth wasn’t measured in wood chips and smelly black beautiful old independent dogs
or falling apart antique chairs or comprehensive but dusty cd collections, k.d. lang, Stevie Wonder, Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack, or posters of hot chile peppers or piles of unsold rocks and bricks in the backyard that were also high standing posts for kids who were imaginary queens and kings and warriors, or tacky red spray painted bicycles.
Our depth was visible and pure and it seemed like everyone else’s was cleaned up and stored away.
It felt that way when I was young.
Now I value my family’s visible depth
and consciously remind myself that no matter how
fresh the paint smells or how not present a quirky old photograph is
it is somewhere, it is somewhere
****, it is somewhere
it is beautiful
to remind myself that.

I suspend disbelief, I do
Pretend for glamour’s sake,
That I’m standing in line, not walking down
Legging capri utopia, but style,
Books, Asian fusion,
And I open my window to outside fire trucks,
Sometimes voices, to pretend I’m not in small-town
Southeastern Ohio.
I close my eyes to a new, non self-conscious,
Self-aware vision.
Well, it was once a real moment:
In a studio apartment, nervous about my mom
Downstairs, outside, below me
Smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk.
Afraid she’d get jumped when I was eleven, or twelve, or thirteen.
Forgetting she’d lived in New York City
in the 1980s when she was
Eighteen.
I didn’t have any fears for her then.
I didn’t have anything for anyone.
I didn’t exist, and I wasn’t afraid
All the time, of something.
I exist now and I watch my back in small town USA,
But I still make wonder visions,
Beautiful, rhetorical, hypothetical
Walks in October five ‘o clock sunshine.
Me, and a book, and take out food walking back to work,
Where my work will be to write this down,
To try my ****-dest to convey what I felt
Out there, on the street.
That self-importance, comfort of the light
In my eyes, and my dark pants, too, they mattered,
And an imaginary cigarette from the ether,
The sun-ray concoction.
It’s almost the exact feeling of sitting on couches,
Next to my aunt’s bubblegum pink ceramics in Brooklyn.
Thinking—how glamourous.
Pretending the one room apartment was mine.
Pretending I could live in such close proximity to a stranger.
Another person, who I may or may not find strange.
Pretending I wasn’t made uncomfortable by the women
Wearing hot dog and hamburger bun bikinis dancing
In kiddie-pools in broad daylight.
How bizarre. While my brother and I played war
Upstairs. “That’s art,” someone probably said, in a
Fenced in small grassy plot in a neighborhood in Chicago.
Later in college, I’d say “the best art makes
us uncomfortable,” and my professor who loves
young adult fiction will applaud me for my incite.

An inherent desire for brass,
And fire escapes, and being
Consumed by tall buildings, and bars
On rooftops is not…
Natural.
It must be media-induced.
I consumed a fair amount of media
That glamourized and shined up and cultured
Cities for me.
Then I went there and saw that I was fearful,
Yet wanted to feel important inside of something vast.
I want to talk to curators of museums about
Everything I’ve learned and haven’t learned.
I want to impress myself with knowledge of streets,
And towns, and maps.
Out of my element, maybe I am finally ready.
Out of mostly whiteness, most of the time,
Into people I’ve never met, people I never thought
I’d know well, into hoping that I can sit in a different
Kind of circle, in a new conversation,
Restoring, transforming,
Wanting to say some sincere things, and
Make some observations in earnest.

concrete slab steps busted knee
in your town
cricket buzz bird wake up call--
your town.
And licking two peace out fingers
in your town.
**** me in your town.
Bone skull ceiling window pane
but it's your town.
Soft all over,
in your town.
Your poetry, your teachers, your town.
Sweating it out, counting steps
in your town.
Sweating it out, too small to fit
in your town.
Blood stained jeans and I
am in Your Town.
And can I borrow your shoes, your shirt,
your ****, your smokes, your friend, your lover,
your town? Your unfinished work?
Your town.

The world is too complex
to divide it into separate columns.

Crickets out the window
long long hair
wispy green leaves flying
and browning outside.

I drove up 23 north.
I drove between a smoldering dark cloud
I drove between lightening and I worried.
Behind me, the sky was purple and clear and golden
and exactly what it should be,
exactly what I needed it to be.  

I was so unsure, all the time.
I know I care about symbols
and trying to articulate the beauty and meaning and sadness
in an inanimate object.
I know I care.  

I won’t always be able to explain a rake
leaning against a pale blue garage.
But at least its there, for me to look at.
It remains unblocked by the sharp splinter in my eye.  

The sun’s energy gave me a fair amount of
Vitamin D this summer.
It will stay stored up in my body.
I will recharge when the sun peaks out again.
When it is vaguely warm I will sit next to the river,
and recharge.  

For now I use what I have
and listen to the bugs outside
and the occasional car.
All of my thoughts and feelings
are in the green leaves flying
and browning outside.

you once sat up in your bedroom
you once sat up
there were nice brown wooden walls that you sat against
you invited people up to your room
to sit with you too
well, i just wish i could invite someone
but i wouldn’t know where to start

When I wake up in the morning
big drooping beautiful sunflower heads
bend to the sidewalk and bump
against my shoulder.  
Through windows kitchen items
sound.
Preparation clanking gently.
A handsome middle-aged man reads to
his daughter on the porch.
A child tells her mother:
"one toe has more air in it"
and what does that mean?
Neighbors carry a door frame across the lawn
and I ask where clark is and pretend
I'm new to the area.
Good morning is hopeful in that way.

Folks shopping for a car at a car dealership
is a depressing sight out of the car window.
All the sedentary businesses along route 131
in Michigan were vague. "Distribution Center"
"Shasta Rentals"  "Oasis Family Restaurant"

And PEACE in a flowery calligraphy
on the bumper of a gray dodge neon
on the bumper of a red denali.
A maroon sedan.
A silver-blue ford truck.
A pale red camero.