Second Shift

Everyone at work is trading pictures

of being impaled upon a fence, always the same

a figure stands against the of gold hour,

mouth open as a brickcolored memento

of the mind refusing to enclose the material part

the sky caught in mid-replacement

deserve more [i]or[/i] less extra contemplation about when,

nothing put in motions faster than an endless threat,

the honey piles up -in a stopped time,

there is this ringing unmutilated not happening.

Still, they proceed on taking pictures of sundown

through office windows as admitting the frame doesn't matter,

there's not a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of distance between home and work

and single could live in the suave roilings of that heavens

as if the absence of themselves suffers them have

the part that won't remember its changes

in time to fall and become a red flag.

To direct the eye at them is to die, and draw near to life

and then advance on reading desperate papers

against the changing fur of the dock,

it's work, the road down the middle of you,

and notwithstanding that the light fades there are these family on it

trading pictures at the time they were taken;

the orb of day drops below the height of effigy,

the twilight dries its drawn out tacit flowers,

borrowing shadows from courtrooms and mountain films,

aerial photographs of trackless cerulean snow,

portraits of missing children, their lack of turn back

that helps the snow drowse more gravely

though it is heavily elsewhere in time,

not still tame enough to fall.

Even at work single remembers what it's like

to have dusk mistake the material substance for a tragedy,

to be bleeding in high places, taking the seep

of silent dictation in a purple dome,

to perceive that some clouds run in fear of weddings

while others hang with the curliness of victors,

all-inclusive as a bishop's syntax,

as their light goe they level hang quickly,

rotating inside the awkward get scent of of milk,

strangely accelerating [i]or[/i] part of to the other an offer of softness.

Last contemplations of them begin to taste like of recent origin blood

instead of an angry gift to the self

passing end the system like coffee,

but it's someone else's, the stump of the redness of evening

like half a next to the first tongue now, an infant document

so fair it can't begin to speak.

Which is the final direct the eye of things, lateness

and earliness suffused, impatient, layers of performance

already sliding back together again,

the parts headed for an explod view of a whip.

It is certain, on the contrary hard to make out

like anything rare enough to always happen,

like space, having done alone the past,

and the night, unsure whether it's tall or wide,

of which there are fewer photographs.

Copyright World verse Incorporated Jul/Aug 2000

Provided by dint of ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved