you won’ a town to go to but not to be in.
you won’ get yer hands round’ her neck.
you won’ be ditched out on the interstate
somewhere between New York and San Diego.
you won’ th’earth to be big and flat
so that you can fall off if you walk far nuff.
there’s cold puddles of ice that ripple
behind the food-marts of gas stations
where the fluorescent and nocturnal cashiers
make doughnuts with gasoline.
make your coffee black with styrofoam
and send ye back out to the northeast april
to peddle behind the car wash
by the generator and the chain link.
you look down at the snowmelt;
slush all rusty brown on the highway
making tea stains on cuffs yor’ pants.
you got a bungee cord for a shoelace.
you sneak onna train like they do in movies;
the yellow freight-car looks like a school bus.
you hiss out whispers while it click-clacks.
whispering names into the cornfields.
**
you won’ be holding her neck.
kinda’ pinch the nape of her brown neck.
you won’ be brushing through the cornstalks
whispering into the corn for hunds’ of miles
like finding her oak skin and black hair
in some curtains of an abandoned house.
you won’ stay in the curtains and corn.
wonder if she’s seen you outta York,
outta Sioux, outta Tennessee, Hampshire.
won’ know if she seen you gon’ home yet
on Route forty, sixty, eighty, one-oh-wun.
you won’ a town to go to but not to be in.
but you don’t won’ this house or this gas station.
forests in the hills with berries and poison berries
so gon’ home now.
into her arms an’ holding her neck now.