Not that Phoenix
Jessea Perry

     

In the planetary sense

there is no difference between

emitting and reflecting light

sort of like a cover song played within

or without the boundaries

of an up and coming neighborhood

that I have no future or past claim to,

other than my own tunnel

backward heather-crowded urge

to assign lucidity to an earlier version

of myself, and now we're in the company

of big rigs blown over by the wind

while on the news they repeat

race has nothing to do with this campaign.

 

The patron saint of radio silence

altars in subterranean train systems

that never fruited. Believing that magic is something

you invented, like wrapping things in maps.

Not so much shelter-bent as newly hatched, the notion

we protect by sorting through the local flyers.

 

Barely a pilot sing-song taking longer to recover

the car in cold wet needles, plus the high probability

of a satellite crash. Helpfully we're reminded the earth

is seventy-five percent water so there is not much

to worry about unless you're in water

and I rarely am. So V's take the nighted place

of tedious cause and questionable effect,

a backyard studio with stacks of books

and being watched, elbowing my way through the jasmine.

The best part about giving voice to a landscape

is picking one that wants you dead.

 

//   Advance   //