The roadway cuts through billows
of impervious green, reveals
its slashes in walls of drilled
and dynamited rock.
Towards sunset, successive fields
of blue-grey pastel layer
the distance. Nodding
at the wheel. World under
glass. Bereft of friends, bereft
of short-term memory, she turns
the object over in her hands,
recounts again the self-same
half-dozen themes. Turds
and sodden toilet paper
boiled up from the sewer
cleanout, so that blue
flies hovered and buzzed
on the face of the lawn.
The upstairs never quite cools
down – books’ bindings
stiffen, crack, flake. Verbs
in threes, like the Father Son
and Holy Spirit, Jesus Mary
and Joseph. When she turns
them over, they stiffen, flake.