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Tenor and Vehicle

   

  

Today comes on like a commercial   

listing possible side effects 

of living; the shape I’m in, 

fallen leaves echoed in concrete. No wind 

but even the deserted bird feeder lists 

and shudders, the sun hot 

as Lucinda Williams growling 

I changed the locks 

as I drive farther south, past the tangle 

of lawn mowers chained together 

outside the pawn shop. One cloud raises 

her hand like she might have something 

useful to add before disappearing 

back into whatever blue does 

when not busy being one of my lazier 

metaphors for quiet despair.    

Look, I’m just trying to say 

today I am so tired   

of looking up, tired even of sky    

when I pass the boy setting his bike down   

carefully on the funeral home’s dead lawn   

before opening the garden hose into his mouth  

holding it over his head then, curls thick 

as seaweed, face bronzed sudden 

into statue, but laughing   

and I’m laughing then too with such pure what   

I am not going to compare it with anything for once   

but I swear I heard him thinking I love you   

the water thinking back, I love me too.



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Praisesong for the People

a project by Amanda Johnston 

2024 Texas State Poet Laureate 

This project is made possible with support from the Academy of American Poets, the Mellon Foundation, the Writers' League of Texas, and the Texas Commission on the Arts. 

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