Slanted Time


In the mispronunciation of events
history is born so far
from the existent world–
a road angling through apartment pines

where men with drooping
bedroom eyes sing you
to sleep into nightmares
of postponed end days–

coal chutes giving way
to laptops and the milk
wagon horse stumbling
from milk-box to milk-box–

forever lost, forever misplaced–
forever horse on the cusp of
an SUV trolling schoolyards
for MBA candidates–

to carry on the faith,
to carry on the markets,
to carry into the future
a scrap of DNA marking us

as people who strived for.