The Promised Land, apparently, is thick with pines.
Around here, the river smells
like brimstone.
The 24-hour bait shop on the avenue makes its money
selling methamphetamines.
An old dial-tuned radio, set to an AOR station, sits on a shelf
above the crayfish tank.
Through the static, Rick Danko sings about believing in hexagrams.
*
What shape is the closest synonym for lonely?
Maybe it’s the ampersand. One of Klee’s dots that went
for a walk and got lost,
preferring vertiginous loops to straight lines—
like Thelonius Monk, wearing a white fur hat and
improvising on ‘Epistrophy.’
His piano sounds anxious, an eighth of a beat
out of time,
percussive like the moon when she sashays down
the hallway in a pair
of knee-high black come-fuck-me boots.
*
I want the moon to be Grace Kelly, the way Hitchcock shot
her first scene in Rear Window—
soft focus lens, tight close up on her face,
so that I can pretend
I’m Jimmy Stewart gently roused from sleep,
opening my eyes to discover the most beautiful woman
I’ve ever seen
leaning in to kiss me awake.
