Arc

A fly lands on my hand it’s how I got here sleeping outside

past ten A.M. Dreaming how the colorless shirts still snap on the line

Geese fly out of the fog

an undertow of bright green snakes heads inland

the trees bordering the big lake writhe with them

Those moths falling like snowflakes in Green Bay

a newspaper blown flat against the wolves’ cage

corrugated metal warehouse

chicory dwindling toward nightfall

a clapboard coffeehouse where a girl stands up during a dream she’s having

about a punctured water tower

And the Saints who are dying And the Birds who are drinking

She goes looking for the desert

and finds it miles deep in Lake Michigan

she finds the opening she finds the moon

let’s just say she finds a place amongst stones

guarded by fish

she has a bag of letters she keeps reading moving her fingers

over the ink inside this elevated tank it’s a dark echo . . .

Remember when she washed the shirts

and they came out with extra color the way the edges of the paper

cut her blisters opening an envelope makes a sound like fire

Straight-line winds someone in the Midwest had a thought

and then the heat piled on heat piled on cold and

there was a wreckage of minds

There’s an apple the bees enter on a green bed of moss

metal ladders bending open like a slow divination under black clouds

but everyone sleeping sees a tornado eventually look at the way the sap

     pours from the pines

horses foaming on place mats boys on rafts land in the wash

They tap the screens in the neighborhoods looking for milk

a fever cuts open water I mean a ferry bound for Ludington

a bale of hay bristles around an apple’s knot of bees on deck

somebody planted it there

And the Birds who are watching, and the Saints who are sleeping . . .

It’s late 2001 so the bale is quickly tossed

it hangs over the water like a pregnancy

it throbs with the internal buzzing of bees

when it hits the green water it bursts into silver flames people can feel

driving the Mackinaw Bridge because they have their radios

tuned to frequencies that sound like light bulbs popping . . .

They can feel the sound with the tips of their fingers

They let go of their steering wheels

a girl presses her thumbs on her doll’s hard plastic eyes

Miss Olive is blind she tells her sister

The bees blow small air bubbles to live in

they can feel the crushing weight of the water pressure

inside the doomed tower

that is why they are so yellow and bright the last minutes of dusk

splinters of color thistles and lightning the first hours of morning

the stolen hours of midnight

a sphinx dreams she is an amphetamine of stingers . . .

I sleep with my hands in a puddle near the downspout several frogs

     see them

without expression they decide there are too many frogs

They make calculations the way a computer wishes it could

the snakes rub their chins along

the causeway of my many blisters they sip the tears from

my eyes but when the bale hits the water out in the lake the flames disperse

a girl wearing overalls is watching

she splits her cocoon black snarl like a short blackening the deck

It is eight ticks from dark she opens a green envelope and blows in it

everyone on board is afraid of the powder in her hair

she looks light as an alewife

she keeps shifting and setting her wings

she grips a guy wire on deck I notice her legs are bare

they are semi-translucent

then they turn dark as water inside a ship’s hold I still believe she is dangerous

I have the shivers I’m halving quarters with a pair of bolt cutters

A woman whose car has been blown off an expansion bridge

drifts into her coffin plush with spilling

she sinks like a flotilla of bruised roses

love burns in the flaming water not a frog blinks

she touches the place where the hair thins near a young deer’s groin

she is kissed by a boy in the vacated lighthouse

Cars stream over the bridge under the shadows of army planes

a spotlight roves the dark-bellied clouds

a woman says Welcome to the bat cave

I have visited the desert and you can’t live on earth

without feeling love the girl has her bag of letters

she leaves puddles on the floor in the pool hall in Green Bay

Now the ferry heaves open under a flapping of wings

smoke freezes where it pours from the school teacher’s house

piano dangled over a break-wall of stones

the metal door falls and makes a sound like a pile of bones shaking

the cars with their hopeful lights dim and sputter

they idle out of the ship’s piss-colored maw

The hay burns sinking and the bees dream of

rising (the frogs think long and hard

and happily come up with a single image in which they see only

themselves) it’s a day quiet as knives the steel moored

in a harbor just before war the wolves sleep in their wood houses

they feel the earth quiver they know what they know with the pads

of their feet even in daylight the school books in town

are really nothing but dust fish begin spraying from the splitting ball

of the water tower . . .

And the Birds who are dying, and the Saints who are rising . . .

She says The life you’ve been living isn't even good for you . . .

There is a white dog in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, sleeping on a flannel

sheet on the floor with a woman whose daughter is a crucifix of blown fuses

she can’t move or close her eyes weeds grow through cracks in her driveway

The daughter sees an orange moon hanging over the water tower

rust filters down over the grass

there is an explosion of metal and breaking concrete

water runs over the roots

her pillow turns black under her head the ragged crows cry and fan out

They drop shadows in the valley where the water pours off the daughter’s bed

like feathers over the mother’s fat ankles she twitches in her sleep

even the dreaming dog frets and moves his feet . . .

But when I turn to face east I see only rain and a blur of leaves . . .

There is the roar of the night singing

the wind cutting hard over the blades of the dunes

the sound the storms make of the lake all November . . .