The city moves slowly, stands slack-jawed on porches, performs tough labors under bandanas— noise of heartbreak, is that a lawnmower or a drill? We ate out. We took a nap. We cleaned. It was all we could do to erase ourselves without learning from the sky that is a train freighted through nighttime intersections, that is a leaf blower. Sprinklers suddenly go off, one from a ceiling, one from a lawn, some built into monkey bars. The rain comes down. In the porch’s shelter, they get so pale and make their oversized tee shirts look so flat, these urban rural teenagers who are so stupid-looking with knowledge. They are archetypes. A possum should nibble their fingers, but there is no possum. There is no coyote head in the tall grass, not yet, just turkey— reincarnation of their lost old Nana who lived large, gambled, took busses. The absolute “ruins conversation,” you tell me. I agree with that because absolutes are turkeys.

DAVID BLAIR was born in 1970. He grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and has degrees from Fordham University and the creative writing program at UNC Greensboro. His poems have appeared in Boston Review, Fence, The Greensboro Review, The Harvard Review, Ploughshares, Verse, and been featured in the anthologies Zoland Poetry and The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. He is an associate professor at The New England Institute of Art in Brookline, Massachusetts. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, with his wife Sabrina and daughter Astrid.