The problem in the highway days was where to begin.
Even the lions we imagined becoming went lame.
Our backs bent early, sights set on oblivion.
War was everywhere. Fathers called it peace.
Developments advanced battalion by battalion
toward the rumored end of history. The weather ecstatic.
Furniture ads relentless. Strip malls glowing
in rivering taillights. The id ran out of land.
A gas station canopy burned red against the dusk.
Mirrors closed into screens. Our drives consumed us.
Who were we to think ourselves architects?
After the getting and spending, what remained
but the shock of touch, the idea of rest?
When the desert bloomed, we misread it—
called it sudden. That was what we knew.
*
This piece recently appeared in Your Impossible Voice, Issue 34
