Published Fall 2006
 
Country
A man asleep in his work clothes
shall not be lifted bodily
to float like lit and falling newsprint
and wake in flames as a voice commands him.
A headline won't print that morning
across his vision, telling him how to live.
A luminous ampersand does not tattoo
itself on his sternum, joining everything,
spinning landscape that extends
from the fingers of each hand
when he turns to find some matches,
all he can see and farther
as he smokes the day's first cigarette.
Cattle graze out there, and other animals,
bones in their stomachs.
His name's stitched over five shirt pockets,
four clean ones and the one he slept in.
He wears it now, lifting each fifth part
to his eyes for inspection: cracks
and misprints. Some grand blueprint
does not emerge on a napkin
from the parking lot lunch cart.
His burrito's the same as ever,
hot above the asphalt.
His children sit in a classroom
he sat in. The teacher spins the globe
and stops it with her longest finger.
She's picking the country where someone lives.
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