Two Poems

Unmappable

Kansas coos me into its wheat.Done with direction, I follow the lightning,God's arrows insisting even the desolate      can be a destination.

In the black and white of a winter dawn      a train zippers the wet land      to a sky clouded with intention.It looks more like a photograph

than a photograph resembles the momentit captures, its frame diverting, its filterslanting truths. Say I make of this a photo —      what would the evidence show?

That I was in a body here for awhileand I wanted this to mean something?      Is this the alibi or the crime?And who is the jury to receive this — no one

knows I'm here. I loaded the car in Technicolorand drove east — had done milked the westof fresh starts — but the time changed      so I don't know when I am.

Kansas says it does not matter. Timerolls over its husks and soil like fog, changingnothing. So much land —      anyone could be buried out here.

After Ever

Everybody's husbands fall in love with me.It can't be helped, they knowI'd look good turned to sea foam,the shell of my pink voicetumbling till lost on the ocean's dark floor.Once a man at a bar told memy hair made him hardso I borrowed a blade from the bartender,hacked it off in clumps,and gave it to him.So many colors! Like a sunsetif the sky was made of body parts.When I was young I was deadand my job was to waitfor a good man to kiss, you know,a man who is good but also into kissingdead girls. So what could I do?I forgot my name and got good at math.I built the bridge you are on nowbetween the thing you want and the thingyou're learning to leave. Strong, no?It's made entirely out of the soundof Czech violins tuningon an October night, winterannouncing its crisp intentions.Across the water whips a flagof a country in which I am the only citizenand so, also, its queen.