Incorrect Measurement Blues


I need long days to think of things: the dry sound of the rain on the zinc, ants up and down
across my jowls, water moving away from itself
like a form of communicability,

and a rooster on a shrimper in the Gulf watches the light crawl across
his toes as the vase of wilted yellow flowers, nonworking laptop, Kingsford charcoal,
microwave, nonworking dryer, cactus,
and ceiling-fan all escape
into and from storms of community.

The days go beyond me like a buoy: mosquitoes in the ruins of the high-school string up and on
along the walls, and the trains blow through at all hours,
episodes of continuity

like chicken-soup simmering, leafless trees, a lake in a field of dead grass - a trust in
foreignness -and my cat, Bob, spayed but still full of desire, a description of a performance,
number out of the universe,
curse of immunity.


by Greg Weiss
winner, Adult Division

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