The Way a Man, and: Western Land, and: Nothing Has a Shadow

The Way a Man

The way a man eats an apple to its core. The way he walks into a room. Leans against a doorframe when talking to a stranger. His hands in his pockets. His slope and angle. The way he throws a punch. The way he leans his chest into the effort. The way he slams a door. The way he means what he says—and doesn’t. The way he slices bread and cleans the knife on his pants. The way a man stands in a group of men considering a machine, a band, a boxer, a star. His silence. The way a man closes his eyes and sighs in deep pleasure. The way he checks the dead bolt before bed. How he takes comfort in this action—man who knows what should be done, and does it. The way he unbuttons his shirt. His pants. The way he pushes his hair back in the shower. With both hands. A glass of water before bed. A body curled in sleep. The way he looks at the woman he loves. The way he looks at the man he loves. The way a man eats an apple to its core. His handshake. His skin in summer. The way a man looks at the horizon line. Hands on the wheel. His belief in the right road. The way he falls asleep on Sunday afternoons. The way a man scans a room for a familiar face. The way a man scrubs his hands with soap and hot water. The escape he takes in this. The way the inside of his arm is always tender. A cigarette in his mouth. A beer held by the neck. The way a man lies to avoid an argument. They way he looks for an argument. How he stands, light caught, in front of the open refrigerator. The way he winces in unexpected pain. The way he looks in the mirror and checks the jawline he’s just shaved. A mouth of splendid joy. The way he unbuckles his seat belt when parallel parking. The way he nods his head when listening. He opens a newspaper and folds it back and over and under. The way this reminds him of his father. He touches her bare shoulder. The way a man sings to himself in the car. The way he rises from a fight. The way a man counts the flock, counts what he sees, then counts what’s missing.

Western Land

A man rides into town. And stays. Learns the language, manners to put a napkin inside his shirt collar, mutter, “Evening,” when walking after dark. The train schedule, bell and bleat, hurry and black trundle, the best place to drink with strangers, and where a hangover can be bargained down into tired. He learns that particular gloss of western sky on western land—shadows of cattle like slow-circling flies, yellow grass in yellow light, stillness. His tongue in the wind and he thinks he tastes the laws of night and honey. Mice huddle behind the hot-water heater, long black minute hand of a clock, and he knows too what branches the songbirds favor in the scrub. He doesn’t ask why the stop signs are missing from intersections or who lives in the trailer with the fluorescent crèche. Then, because he is foolish, he looks up the word solitude and is offered solitude of a lighthouse keeper. I am, he knows, no keep. No light, no eye, no safety. Better to be miles from any ocean, any tide, any shore. Better to let passing ships sink.

A man rides out of town. He imagines five hundred miles from every face familiar as the moon. Not the leaving of children or saints, not early Tuesday or lists crossed by purpose. Not so long, good-bye. He rides until the hills flatten into knocked-down cubicles, a kind of flatness that answers every question with silence. But that’s not exactly true. Wind burns his ears. He hears a version of fire...