If this is weeping, it isn’t; it’s
The shuttered mouth of a flooded subway
It’s bees iced in their hives, a crocus’ spears
Shaking from soil; goodnight
Goodnight, I love you, I love you too
Ok, sleep well; it’s the man who draws maps
Of non-existent continents, naming cities
After corrupt and dead popes or linebackers
From his second favorite football team’s twilight
It’s a web page of clumsy pornography
Waiting, hopefully, for its very first hit—
Svmer is icumen in, sing cuccu, I miss you
Goddammit, you’re like an actor with a gorilla
Head and an elephant head and all the animal heads
There’s no need to go to the zoo and I’m
Already walking on all fours; to give it
A name, to give it anything—I know
This isn’t weeping, but it has the same rhythm

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 the "These City Lights" series by Abram Landes