Modern Times

I

A peacock fans.Other peacocksfan.

Girls go runningacross a pictureof a globe.

We understandwhat fiction is.

We have roomsfor rooms.

That is not the sky.That is the sky.

II

There is art in the way a body fallsbut in the way it lies is artless.

Art in a drowning peoplewho tumble like laundry

in the chop of a stormonly the future saw

coming. But forests still droptheir galaxies of seeds to take hold

in fire, some necessary burnlike saying goodbye to a lover

who never loved you. Like Mosesputting flame to peasant towns.

III

Let me show you a scar the shape of a rose. A city full of heads and nobodies. Or if you’d like bodies made only of wings, paper-thick flapsthat lift impotently so people hover slightly off the pavement, tipping hats,smiling to passers, bees licking the flower at the center of their palms,the sky like the sky after fire or the air before a storm,the wind full of dark shapes turning.

IV

When I remember the riotI remember dual fires

of need and needingnothing, the city,

one reporter put it, likea forest burning open

ten thousand acres of seed,like two moons cue balling

into each other orthe ground of Missouri

breathing summer cloudsof cicadas, who come

into this world so fastand so numerous

for a week we rememberthe purpose of a body:

to break and notbe broken.

V

Now we are singingto clouds hoping the dead

have ears. Their silenceis an American silence.

Oh God, Oh Louisiana, wheredoes sweetness come from?

What is this strange regretbut another way to be in a world

we don’t recognize? Another womandead from trying to get across the river.

Another woman dead from tryingto get across the river.

Cicada, I too am crying,rubbing my wings.