The Mall Age
       

Thank you stars for this wilderness
of skin, the wide nowhere

of this internal range I mustang,
I buffalo. I tell you, the flesh

is a haunted place, compost
of every extinguish. I was alone

with ghosts, then wasn't. Thank you
scaled creatures that coil

and un for this contagion
of flexion and contraction that is

infant. Thank you tar pits,
space-dark pupils blown into silk

roads. I would have walked on my knees
though by some grace of rubber trees

I have tires to kiss the long nape
of these miles. Thank you unseen

hands for fashioning from stellar
ash this little life

raft for the village I knew
too late it would take. I invent

errands that can't wait, flash one
like an invitation to this cross

section of Main Street. Jeweler,
Baker, Dressmaker. Thank you

Mojave, thank you sand storm
for these vast planes of glass,

the golden nowhere where
I wander in time with the woman

pushing a stroller who has no name
but mother. Below us,

uneasy continents grind
their teeth. Thank you beasts

of California past. What quill
shall I credit with the fine corridor

of my daughter's spine? What plumage
its splendid circuitry? We weave

concrete streams and-domesticated
weeds that never want for rain, but other

roots must loom a second canopy
of mica and maggot, a dark

nowhere that seethes beneath this
slab. And skeletons of every

stage, suspended in earth's museum.
Thank you for this rotating exhibit

on display in light that's just
now reached us.

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Copyright © 2016 Erin Rodoni All rights reserved
from Cimarron Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission