matchbook

he earth is black and wet that’s the first thing in the world then the beetles which do not mind being overlooked then the tough november grasses who love each nearing winter for the chance to be brown and alone then the trash screaming color and longing to the gutters plastic wrapper simulacra of chips candies and eucalyptus soothers not necessarily to scale and certainly empty then the dog staring straight up the utility pole for what eludes its hunger.

Then you throughout these throbbing objects yet outside them as a page is in a world and yet is a world.

Then the leaves in the wind dead and flying just as they wished all summer then a startling of starlings who are winged as always with mirrors at least and the promise of shifting constellations at most then the squirrel a dancing angel on the pin of the utility pole flashing its tail lasciviously at the dog’s pink mouth then the clouds chewing the sky like vast molars promising to meet the horizon grinning then the horizon itself vanishing from white to blue to black that’s the last thing in the world.