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logic as bankrupt-outdated-short-circuit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.
