They say history hurt because mountaintops
are craggy. We know the sun’ll set sooner tonight
than the night before. When a camera obscura
brings the whole neighborhood into the den
we’ll know where we are, and when
we put ice on our heads to simulate winter
it melts down our faces to puddle
in the smalls of the chests. They used to
think heat made you drawl, languish in
rituals like rocking chairs, irises nodding
assent. Was it here that she killed
a copperhead with a hoe? Was he
cataloguing maps in a weatherless vault
while I read about a man on the trolley hiding
beneath a woman’s voluminous skirts
when the city sacked itself, or already
on his way home, watching geese set the landscape
in motion by moving through it? We thought
tomatoes would crawl up cages
from the hay when we’d be acting of our
own accord. To make captions for a book
of obelisks. Waking early to iron rumpled shirts.
