I admire the fit of the monkey into the alarm
& the women who drive their obscene sofa trucks from mailbox to church
… well, this is notebook land, deadpan ghost railways
no one travels here without a blade somewhere on her person

the land girls are feather happy
filling their days with reports of carnival
and no one goes into the tunnels because the people
who live down there get no nourishment from clocks
and are the invention of various conspiracies venomous and rigid with confession
& sneaking even deeper into the darker corners with their beds close by

the sass is always wrong
beginning with the first letter of the first word
but the prophets keep pumping it out
for an audience that prefers magic, not miracle

not caring when we are spoken to
in the woozy language of the dogs
we are considered to be