I.
Nebraska is Never Anything
Iowa passed in a series of
collapsing, unrelated images.
out of the fog, out of the fog, they said.
Cropped grasses and winded bodies
of trees seemed to repeat every mile.
At an Amish gas station, there was the
discovery that nothing really is in time.
Amish have existed, unchanged, in the
superficiality of my eyes, but
out of the purple smoke still, like a
magic trick, they appear in rows.
Now put on the CD, and enter the CD;
into a world, copper, enclosed by
the frayed black edges of two decades,
serenaded below the remains of
skyscrapers washed in the sensation
that you have drained into a new age.
And now snow comes down, in an
imperfect form, an imperfect past and
future, all the cognitive separations.
And snow, Fuck the snow.
II.
Nebraska (My One Day Residing In)
Surf music, stranded docks, purple maelstrom waters,
thin glassy dream, boredom, fumigating Tuesday,
the list read, taped to the back of a Toyota, sundried,
in a junkyard between here and there, positioned in
the rotting enlightenment gases of today’s sun, today.
Speaking of Nebraska, incidentally I was there for the day,
two years past, incidentally, for a school trip that I hated.
Two years passed, and now I’m listening to surf music
to tip the scale of coincidence in favor of the divine.
III.
Nebraska is Really Iowa
I walked in halfway through the conversation,
swiped by the shadow of a seductive altar.
The vase had lips, a tongue, and a terrifying
pair of dilapidated teeth, which were received.
Ask for the phone, that’s what I did, in the hotel.
Black shiny plastic and creased foil, peeled
fire standing beneath my ribs, driven against.
Shit of rage, angel of forgotten endings sits.
Up on the roof, chemical processes confer the
power of liquid to ice. Nebraska appears, lovingly
and in the tune of a furious winged being.
I am still wrapped up in its noise, pinging
every tenth second, echolocating into this now.