Swift Trucks
       

This place has views

of black cows, heads bent,
some galloping across a field.

That's from the left side.

To the right, there's the runaway
truck ramp on 1-85, rutted

and eschewing abandon.

What isn't stuck somewhere
godforsaken? Only

one of these statements

is true and you get to pick:
he wants to have a word

with us or I can't pay

for gas no more. O Country
View Motel. I press

the shutter release and say

yes to the sound of your
(captured) face, to fists

made of facts, to whatever

doesn't pay the rent but
means well anyway.

This is not the poem

in which someone invented
the term hypnotism.

In which you say yes

to what you see—yes,
we must get it seen to.

Only one of these

statements is true:
your face carries

a certain strangeness

that does not surface
much or your photos

(when threaded together

like jewels) bear every
message you were excited by

when the world spoke to us.

When the world spoke to you
it said stay. It said fragmentary.

It touched your face, your

beleaguered tender important face
and said this and this and this.

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Copyright © 2014 Erika Meitner All rights reserved
from Pleiades
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission