[victory lobe] 

tiny towns or a dog could keep me pleased  

for six months, then I’d wear felt triangles  

look like December, have needles on me

molt on the plane to the warmer enclaves

oranges in a grove of which I’m boyish 

Needles California’s fuzzy desert 

I notice it under the gospel’s wings 

my bald enthusiasm laps up babies

the vacant mall Francesca photographs 

on its escalators over easy

red and gold 2004 New Jersey 

the bay visits her in Asbury Park  

denuded as train cars between freeways 

I pin her gospel, play it in the air

[gentle giant]

if waiting is both myth and procedure

then poems are procedure’s other myth

they behave in booties like rainy dogs 

when in them procedures sit and stall  

how we might orbit at proximity

live at an address a long time standing

into being there against wherever else  

fermenting our cabbage recycling

our firmer yogurt into better ones

how to back up be dense to each other

what feels like a terminus is a street

above it more infrastructure beneath 

it the end of the line wants another word

a tether makes us here among its air 

[it’s a hometown wedding]

could you imagine in my trim hands we’d start let alone not be able to stop 

you stir yogurt until I take up your knuckles and then walk off to peel cities 

expensive as they get, we take this trip around the sun and then another 

we compose in a sequence of sleeping on what people we’ve loved will see and like

everyone’s here for once and if you shout it’ll bounce off your elementary school 

a benevolent use of fuel for planes also the water the meals somewhere bright 

not my Athens but your other prime town we’re trying minorly to nature in

[it’s the technology of the feet]

at a birthday party in an apartment with three exits one is tan and 

I realize I keep vigil there like a frozen last slice, our talking in the hall 

turns my face into a cake you make all day it’s pumpkin like you’d call a red dog  

we leave for the mall and your car comes too like a plastic hug over the boxes  

our chapter is finite days like anthologies of angels with lengths in minutes  

so you know how long until bed, the pale future is our private room I see it 

I realize my green shoes in my hands and leave, I saw you know them and see it too 

[it’s the first of its kind]

if I froze without my jacket, where would they put me, like Scary Lucy up 

in Celoron, New York training kids not to freeze or your face will fall like that 

as the framing of a city might freeze its buildings, as its green cools a season 

like pictures of what were my grandparents, like their face is always sort of a self

the city we make of the city we’re in, nothing takes the exact shape of breathing 

and to be born and for no one to tell you angels are the half life of waiting  

base jumpers in parachutes draw the plants close, snap apart in Yellowstone for that