the cubicle where we daily toil, the demoniac cackling erupting
from the empty spaces down the hall, size of an in-box
crammed with memos and motions, size of the St. Louis Arch,
gateway to the West but also a gateway to hell. Hail the size of
any Bernoulli-Principle-lifted sphere, plane whose glazed-donut
wheels touch down in Dallas, where airborne semis cartwheel
like nimble batons in a Memorial Day Parade, like a drum majorette-
come-receptionist’s briefs, bills stamped URGENT; CONFIDENTIAL;
hail the size of our urgent, confidential grief, hail laughing
like a Three Stooges soundtrack on continuous loop, hail
like the masses in the market for more, bigger than the last
disaster parade battering BMWs, Buicks. Rams. Hail trampling
the twice-plowed fields, the newly-planted seedlings,
the plow-blade longing to shimmer with melting;
hail pelting tractor, trodden toiler, the defeated,
those a single glistening stone away from signing
over the farm to CONAGRA; hail, the spared barn
bursting with grain the color of a Louisiana scramble.
- At the Naples Botanical Garden - April 13, 2020
- Hail the Size of - September 1, 2016
- House of the Animals, Work of the Lord - April 5, 2013
