Forest blinking in stuttering out, soiling itself under
The moon’s sterile spotlight, forgetting its name
Snatching as much Sudafed as we could
The lights turned on, the vacuum hum running over
Lists of what needs doing, the cinema carpet
The prison camp of heaven
Of broken things, of things thrown away
Or ovens—On wet prairie grass
Between my fingers and hands, your name does not
Appear: Zombie rapture thing, survivors clinging
To hell, Nazareth—what needs repair
What you deliver and seat beside you
Is not a body, like copper wire
Ripped through walls, flowers made of
Blah blah blah, what you salvage
Is a mobile of nerves on an electrified wire
Writhing in the ecstasy of
You were kicking me in the stomach, yelling
Meatball Sandwich Meatball Sandwich
Trees don’t understand sin—a column of fire expanding
The limit of your endurance in this bifurcated universe
Pushing through mounds of sassafras and rising insects
So why sit in your accelerator’s ring where constellations rust
On long ruined axes and you give
Smashed particles a name? Lord Jesu
Thou didst bow Thy dying head
Upon the tree, this not a prayer without your
Following O be not now / More dead to me! Word
Without which—I urinated on myself
In a blackout in the land of frames
They booted me from the library
Morel, Puffball, Turkey Tail
Where does one find enough
Blood to turn back the fire?

Joe Hall’s first book of poems is Pigafetta Is My Wife (Black Ocean Press 2010). His poetry and fiction have appeared in Gulf Coast, HTML Giant, Barrelhouse, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Zone 3 and elsewhere. With Wade Fletcher he co-organizes the DC area reading series Cheryl’s Gone. He no longer lives in a trailer park.

From "These City Lights" by Abram Landes