Accumulation, and: The dog warms one of my blue feet

ACCUMULATION

It's cold. And while I'm better at frying chicken thighsso the skin and rosemary stick,

I still haven't bought envelopes for these postage stamps,or checked the mail for that package you sent.

I speculate it's a waffle iron,but I've been wrong before.

________

It seems that, at my most creative,I am finding ways not to love you.

I wonder, if we went ice-skating, and purpled our heels, would I prayfor a power line to fall, and buckle us like fainting goats?

________

There was a blizzard in Knoxville, the day I calledto pay off my court fines. It's forty

here, in northern Ohio, and the snow mortarsweeping pillboxes in the Kroger parking lot

where dejected Samoansjoist themselves with canvas crack-straps,

flaring in cart-wrangler Day-Glo vests—thisis what I'll return to—

ducking the plastic breezeway strips,banging around in a corral.

________

Even in late January, the boxeron Prospect worries a punching bag in his yard.

Its dry thud, like the sudden moment of inspirationwhen a frozen lake decides to split.

THE DOG WARMS ONE OF MY BLUE FEET

extending beyond the edge of a pin-stripeand polka-dot quilted Appalachia, where

voices lope like pickup cams, come unbolted and jettisonedover hollers, to lie forgotten and bursting into Kudzu.

Like a muddy river, Tennessee crooks one arm overKnoxville's thin and weather-beaten shoulders,

like my shoulders, indecipherable from a clothes hanger, orthe way the Midwest goes to its morning gothic

with a stiff purpose; a sports coat, and the hearse-like austerityonly a warm garment bag can lend.