Regression Analysis
We stared at the eclipse
disappointed to see the inside of our eyes
papered over with help wanted ads.
The vault of heaven recently installed a time delay safe.
I buy shoe laces on credit.
Watching myself pass through
a convenience store safety mirror.
A cop car circles the lot with its lights on, no siren.
A warning of a warning still to come.
Let another year pass.
Birds dream of a windowless world.
The outage map was incomplete. Dependent on those in the dark, to report as much.
The sky became a mirror after the storm, the restoration of service.
Late in the calendar. Past due,
seasons arrive without warning.
Summers punctuate themselves in an outparcel of sky
above a neighbor’s inground pool.
Exit ramps sung with rain. An atrophied sun
overlooks men moving torn up carpets to the dumpster after foreclosure.
After we couldn’t pay the trash bill I’d drive the garbage to the park after work
and leave it next to locked dumpsters.
Evening still triaged in the brush.
Dogs dream in rabbit spines.
In the morning, my pores sing
once the razor crosses the line
of fog in the travel sized mirror.
Fluorescent bulbs. Inside the wire, a kind of language goes unheard. Efficiently staving off
shadowed corners. The last one out gets the lights.