This was the year drought autumn never ended.
Rivers couldn’t float their barges, prairies
burned in a sulphurous caul, dead blossoms and clots

I could go out like that,
sucked to a whisper like the midtown
tax building explosively leveled

of asphalt—bypasses and freeways—and a venomous, blood-orange dusk above it all.

It’s safer to keep sailing on
than to be owned by pagan men

I remember the eerie, flickering pall
cast up from the instrument panel onto his face,

Salt me down where love was
on a blue burn to remember the real pain.
I’m worn out from my back’s arch and pull,

I followed her gaze past rooftops of tin, fired-clay
and tar, to the lake's far sleights of vision--its gulls
blown sideways and backwards in flight, its islands floating

Shall we exchange children and face cream?

While I wait I copy the smallest details,
how experts supposed a violent end, this corpse
an ill-fated soldier. A musketball to the leg. Another

Years have passed since you were in my city—
our city, then-and certain aspects of a certain day
remain with me like film in a goblet after wine.