Time-machine transmogrification and too little sleep
take me somewhere I’ve never been before,
I fall asleep in one city and awaken in another.

I finally get to visit Casa Francesca,
a magical abode stuffed with wonderful books,
and nooks and typewriters.
It is around 100 years old,
and at night the tiny staircase
will tell you noisy stories.

Oh how I love peeling paint on old houses.

In Muncie, Indiana times are hard.
So many of these once grand, now tattered houses
are boarded up- doomed to ruin in ghost-town
neighborhoods. The inhabited houses are obvious
for their strollers sprawled in the lawn and tied-up dogs.

Twin maple wings

Spring has only just begun in earnest here,
so I’m tilted back to weeks ago, and the tulips
have erupted in a fanfare of petalled flame.

Burned out wrecks have fields of wood violets in the back.

Walking through deserted alleys, you may come across
piles of mysterious hair, discarded fright wigs
left by forgetful or tearful witches.

DESOLATION STATION
Indiana is beautiful, bleak buildings and bright riots
of flowers, dying dogs, big thunderstorms.
That, and the sound of trains off in the distance-
when I was little I had tapes of storms and locomotives
I would listen to help me get to sleep.
This place is somewhere between GUMMO
and In Cold Blood, which I am now reading.
The midwest, where “the tawny infinitude of
wheatstalks bristle, blaze.”

EVERYTHING FOR EVERYBODY

Dodge City Road Dawgs
is not our favorite bar however,
that would be the Red Dog Saloon,
where the bartendress is hawk-nosed
cree-looking woman with a black eye
and a nasty cut on the ridge of one eye.

Many perfect mornings spent here,
waking with shuffleboard sand under my fingernails.
A red cardinal levitating outside the window.
Yesterday we visited a parliament of wee screech owlets.
I’ve been dreaming of snakes, and earthquakes.