from A Whirligig Called America
       

What's the use in a nest, love,
in this palace of fine particulates?

In America we won't repeat ourselves
on the long drive from nowhere to nowhere.

Admission to America will be lightning
dust over corn fields in Rogue's Hollow.

I don't want to be an amplifier in cutoffs
anymore, love. I don't want to house

heaps of lag bolts in my body.
I don't want the dead to cut wakes

through my sleep or anything else you're beside.
I will sing better in America, which is to say at all.

I will rim the bomb's nose with soap.
I will rope the dead in closer,

feel for their candles because I'm useless.
When I get to America I will write a poem

that will make my friends and family proud
or at least forget they're sitting in a chair

because, girl, those are the first things banished
there. Lie, float, or get gone.

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Copyright © 2012 Patrick Culliton All rights reserved
from Cutbank
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission