NaPo Day 30 and Beyond NaPo 31 and 32

New Jersey

Put out the light, Edison,
return to your river, to your
fishing with a bamboo rod.
Forget your rod and let
the fish still swim in their
ignorance. The schoolchild
working late into the night
on advanced trigonometry
will thank you. The factory
worker descending into the
chemical tank will thank you.
The first-time lover too,
fumbling with the buckle
of the boy on top of him,
borrowing an excuse from
the moonless night for his
inexperience. That lover, he
will remember the sweet
terror afterwards, as will
the savage, cowering in
the fundamental shadow
of the eclipse of the sun.


New Mexico

No, it doesn’t go
beep-beep.
The roadrunner
has a slow
and descending
dove-like
coo.
With its red
and blue
mascara,
it’s a drag queen
who has
just undressed
after the show,
and from the print
of its
zygodactyl
feet, digits
2 and 3
facing forward,
1 and 4
facing back,
nobody knows,
not even him,
where he goes
off-stage
into the night
of flashing horns.


New York

Which
place to tout
in one’s home state?
So many places
you should see,
as it must be
in yours,
but you must not miss
Ellis.
Through the Main Building passed the ancestors of forty percent of Americans.
Shivering, sleepless
through the night,
Louis Adamic
heard every snore
in his rib
and dreamed in a dozen
different
languages.
The statue
is the ideal but
the station was the reality.
Heartbreak Island,
those excluded,
some wearing
my face, others
dressed with so-called defects,
called it.
Families called it Island of Tears.
They still do.

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