Wednesday, April 2, 2014

not brand new


The man at the 
hardware store 
tells me,
brand new, 
the thing I need
will cost an amount
greater than 
the smudged sum
in my checkbook,
but I live in
Machine World
with rules I
cannot ignore,
to wit: disrepair 
is not an option,
which is why
today I trace
the topography
in this junkyard,
and follow an
outcropping of
consumer sediment
which the woman
in the shack by the gate
told me might contain
the fossil I seek –
not brand new—
it’s a sad stratigraphy
of discarded dreams
and relic prosperity,
mounded moraine
deposited here by
the endless freeze
and thaw gripping
the material world:
a window sill
air conditioner
stripped of copper,
an assortment of hub caps
made for cars long ago
thrown into the lake of fire,
a Maytag washer
rusting behind the
wizard’s curtain,
and a hundred other things
I hold into sunlight
at every possible angle
before tossing them back
to finish their journey
to the sea
without me.

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