I.

         Unmedicated visionary,
full-time armchair operator—
he could turn a truckbed of scrap lumber

         to a hen house squared-up enough no fox
could slide. Lucky roosters peck cornmeal
grain-by-grain off the earth—call it God’s stopwatch.

    II.

         Through my voicemail phone-static,
Mark jabbers his bus station Radio Shack
logic as bankrupt-outdated-short-circuit

mallrats skitter listless, shelling
their collective family peanut-memory
against spotlessly-flawed marble floors.

    III.

         Alabama River reeds hum
his floodname after a Gulf hurricane
watermarks all the downtown brick

         buildings—for years, I was blindsided
by County jail phone calls, splotchy-postcards
signed love—the word was a phantom

         licking stamps in the dark.