by Marc McKee

Proceeding with delicacy is a cultivation
sayeth the ginger. Sometimes I think

each year has its own hand
writing an epistle into the calamity quilt

of our consistency. And we are dolls
made of correspondence with time

but hey! Look at that shopping cart
go. The haught slung from the sun

hits and passes through
and makes a shadow and a glint

and something rises up in you
like words coming up off a page,

like the appellative scars on a tree trunk
bsppicking up their own knife. Is it any wonder

you find yourself on this bus, twilight indigo
spleaking all over you, and in your hand

what? Doesn’t it feel like
a tiny jar of teeth? What is medicine?

I am imagining what it is like
to be even older, to have

what is strung together for you
to play into a recognizable shape

begin a slow farewell. There is something delicate
about a charred house,

the way it tells you what it was,
over and over.