Dangerous Goods. Sean Hill

POSTCARD TO WRONG ADDRESS

      Yesterday I was, one place to begin

      and Today I saw, another, but I

      know I doesn’t matter to you. You

      don’t know I or me for that matter.

      But you are appropriate—

      appropriately unfit like the not it

      we sang out in our childhood games.

      You’re like a confessional or, maybe,

      the restaurant suggestion box;

      you don’t care if I’m penitent

      or cynical. I could tell you about

      the side of paradise I hiked

      today with its flora and fauna—

      the birds! or the Sidle Parade,

      a subtle spectacle I saw yesterday,

      and it matters not. I could tell

      you how I really feel about my

      father or my shoe size, and they’d

      both have the same weight like

      the Weighing of the Heart—the soul

      needs to balance the feather to gain

      entry into heaven. Tomorrow

      I intend to go to the Dead Man’s

      Button Museum. They’re also

      called dead man’s throttles—installed

      in trains in case an engineer keels

      over. Without pressure, the brakes engage.

POSTCARD TO EDUARDO

       for E. Corral

      Leaving Dickinson, ND, on 94W with the sun

      rising at our backs, a tractor trailer in front

      and from the height of my vision, from nowhere,

      or from heaven, a wine-soaked handkerchief, trailing

      its edges, falls as quiet as a bruise into the next

      lane over—a barn swallow caught in the truck’s wash.

      They once lived in caves, but now make their nests

      in man-made shelters, under bridges and barn eaves—

      barns where might be kept a horse’s harness,

      the parts of which you recited to me once—crupper,

      martingale, throatlatch—rolling your r’s, lashing those

      words lavishly for all they’re worth. I’ve since been told

      one should always keep the throatlatch nice and loose.

POSTCARD FROM A DESTINATION

      I’ve heard a man would need a keel

      bone six feet long

      to cradle muscle enough to pull him

      up on his own, keep him in the air,

      or wind between a breeze and a gale,

      a bit more than enough water

      to drown in, and a sense

      of displacement to set sail.

      A keel bone is not a rudder, but

      either can get you here.

      I suppose I should say, it was warm

      and clear here today, or

      boats have keels and birds

      have keel bones.

      Was I the space between the ruffled

      feathers on a robin’s red breast

      —a wispy yen for warmth—before

      you knew me?

      A keel’s leading edge

      is called a cutwater,

      not to be confused with

      a shearwater—a seabird

      seldom seen from shore.

      This note could fit in a bottle; one’s

      being emptied; the last red drop rolls

      down its neck.

      Soon dregs will rest in the curve

      of the wineglass’s belly—a hammock’s

      sag here, where the day’s dregs sit on the sea

      at the far edge of everything.

      Here is me; I am here; I am desire;

Скачать книгу