Do nothing but reach with the pine trees. The girls scatter
where the sky falls at their feet. Prairies stretch and stretch
to the last brush of light. Sundown:
the brightness returns as late-night lightning,
slick moving down their legs. All paths seek the ground, singing ribbons
of copper, north-made miners tunneling in hills like theirs.
Every mall in the Midwest is dying, for which we pray. We’ll wake to blue,
praise the blue by our heads. And factories bleaching to gray.
The smokestacks theirs until wind sways, carries the sky away.
Fasten our heaven here: of ore, rubber, and slag.
Kiss frog lips until a poisoned prince carries us away.
This night like any other: the girls brush their teeth with runoff
and dream of young men making dark rivers, dusty faces pressed
to the rock’s slick corpse, begging it to bleed.
