New in Town

New in Town

We descended on rented birds of fire, runted gods

porting power cords and lording neck pillows.

We pulled the chute and touched down

outside Terre Haute. We putted in on a hometown

tank of gas; hoofed it halfway from damn near

Milwaukee; emerged from fields, our past on hard

plastic wheels. We are not tourists. We are

eager to own and waiting for you

to open your door. We are hovering in the home

goods aisle at Target like that daddy

longlegs in the corner of your bathroom

watching you floss. . . . that cartoon cloud of limbs

and POW? We got broken up with, fired, evicted,

or broke up, quit, packed up

without forwarding address; got restless, foot-

loose, a snake in one or more of our boots, or had no

boots and wanted to feel the snow; got disowned,

discharged, disillusioned, or had a surprise

child, a leaky premonition, a fender-bender and never

looked back. We regret. We

[redacted]. We shouldn’t be here today, one way

or another: errant blade missing our head

or a vein by an inch, or two years

flinging open every door looking for an exit,

or the impossibly calculable probability of that

one ancestor running into that other ancestor

then . . . and could we not stretch

our luck further—were they Neanderthals? We are

not sure, but we know there was

a great ape! A thrifty fish! A lonely microbe

whistling on a bog! Mostly though,

you can thank our parents, those pillars of bright,

for deciding on a whim, a lark, a philanthropically

ad-hoc twist this was the mistake

with the right je ne sais quoi, and voila: life!

New in Town

Slope-shouldered from another week

of me-ing, of being hammered into a shape

you call your name like a coastal town square

in the eye and shot through with pride,

say No more. Declare yourself done

lugging this leathered ruck of carbon

and spinning fresh yarns of I. Ragekick

the slipshod plinth. Spit on all the pity, fun

facts, and name tags. Remain uninitiated,

untrained, unonboarded. Forswear the first

impressions. Reciprocate not one more business-

like handshake—and mercy! never

another Little League postgame fist bump!

Greet with a deathstare each How are you

liking things? Take not one more crack

at this ice. Seize that seething doozy Do people

like me? and swallow it whole at happy

hour beneath a frozen margarita. Claim that

crevasse and wait for townies to gather ‘round

your double-wide duvet. If home were still home,

you’d be there. No more to questions, to self-

recriminations, to the mind turning over

and going nowhere like . . . no,

not a motor, a machine, another soup-

ed-up, greased thing. Be done with the mind

imagining itself to be what hums, secretes—

the mind a computer, the mind a factory,

the mind an obsolescent. Before: the mind

a wagonless wheel. Of course, the mind

at some point a gun. No more.

Be a cloud

in a valley shading a pear tree;

be the tree; be the tree’s friskiest root

stretching out to tickle the river into current;

be the flow, the bed, the mouth;

meet the sea: swallowing, swallowing.

New in Town

Here, I am nobody’s

beloved. Take me

for a fool, but I am

nobody’s fool; a free-

range fool turning

the wrong way down

a one-way, taking

a pedestrian’s raised

arms to be my first

encounter with Midwest

nice, and waving as I

pass; a free-agent

fool bashing my head

on the low-hanging

doorframe moments

after the barista had

remembered my name

and I thought Wow . . .

I’m a regular now! A mentor

asks if I’m feeling home-

sick, says we’re lucky

to have somewhere

we long for—

isn’t that the thing

with lottery winners,

always ending up

worse off and alone?

Across my sloppily

spackled apartment

ceiling, a tableau:

that primordial fish,

first to drift onto land,

inching up a cliff

into the strangest

of arms. I’m going

to miss this place.