In a year of throwing voices into the hot wind
Filling the road with blue and red sawhorses
Blocking the street in a year of knowing the correct
Word or where places were as I imagined them
Growing dark like levels I hadn’t reached in a game
I was playing too much time lost to one thing
I should revolve around the lost time give it
The attention I give myself in a year of watching
All the branches fallen in my yard fall out of
The wind across my attempts to focus to keep
Going a little longer wrapped up in a blanket on
The porch in a year of women moving into
The house across the street each with her turn
Using the leafblower in a year of not knowing
Anyone by their faces no matter what they
Say their voices come out of movies in a year of
Building a barricade with magazines and newspapers
I added to it whenever I wasn’t paying attention
I set myself to doing nothing in a year of not
Finishing my thought I was circled by a moon or
Several I was clay settled into a chair opposite
Myself a part of a pair I felt as if I’d arrived at lunch
Not knowing whether I should be there but still
This water contains a lemon slice floating amid
So much ice in a year of tornado warnings or
In a year of an actual tornado across the city
Growing as it passes above the man-made lakes
Through the fairgrounds crossing back and forth
Over the river before coming up the hill
And holding at the intersection outside my house
Will I come to the porch to meet it or huddle
Behind my walls purpling under green skies in
A year of what I can I will in a moment by
Speaking forward be moving in circles not unlike
Someone rotating a lazy Susan in search of what’s
Outside the circumference of their desire in a year
Of when I was expected to arrive passing for
A moment before me holding me up rushing in
So late you’ll have to forgive me if I’m not myself

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