Author: James Brush

I thought I was some problem
scientists could solve, a theory
the Nobel prize they’d hang up on their walls

but we’re from the last generation
that can disappear completely, unplug
pretend we’re never home

we laugh like animals, laughter welling
from some place behind the deepinside
we ghost away from old classmates

& lovers, drink this don’t pay attention
there is nothing happening here
this pretty postcard says it all

make a list of daydreams now & line them up
like soldiers staring over border walls

See the fireflies spark glowing light
this is the drought you can’t escape

listen to the glimmer in your eyes
if there were stars out tonight
that’s how they would shine

you can’t go around Texas
it’s everywhere—in your clothes,
your hair, stuck between your teeth

a jet plane’s contrail
splits in two, a heart breaking

dissolves into cumulus clouds
that look like bees

I wish I was a horseman racing 
headless heedless wild down the plains

bright sunshine glints on razor wire
an egret pumps the sky
a daytime star in blue

imagine the newspaper you read every day
I will be the article you clip & never throw away

now do you smell the slow spring coming?
the grass humid with the buzz of dragonflies

an airplane’s drone reaches the rec yard
it’ll land somewhere in a few minutes

we will still be here
imagining birds & sky & other lives

sunlight moves like a broom
through wild worldspinning grass

the grackles in the trees are machines
tuning up & ready for the day’s

music no one would recognize
a heartbeat on the edge of familiar

songs written in dead languages
& trees that grow twisted on the plains

could be the old hair metal guitar
that escaped the pawnshop wall

I stole this from some stories you used to tell

something from beyond the memories
of great grandparents & 90s hard drives

a butterfly struggles flaps mad
through the yard

warm morning daguerrotype sunlight
& notes slipped past the censors

the swoop and swirl of phony wood
painted on a tabletop

listen: we drift through high plains
memories from movies
& dry dust surf rock soundtracks

beneath an overturned mason jar
gears drop into that smooth oscillation

how we dance now we dance how we dance

I wish I was an Iceland gull
soaring over stormy seas

I’d act like I belonged there

there like tiny purple flowers
in green grass, sparks & eruptions

where killdeer poke along
a summer road

twisting down the mountains
ran a river road

we knew it so well
knew it wouldn’t end

but we’re clocks
& we cannot tell the time