Each evening from my bed I calculated & compared the state of my soul with the state of Kansas, because a place also carries a name. Did my body make an objection to traveling across Texas internal conditions in which I abstracted myself Chicago I never had to force myself to immigrate to the inside thought // like a possum // playing dead // leaving as little as possible living at a surface // which might be burned // a lamp, a desk ... entered the eye ... to prove something ... was going on ... outside the skin Baltimore Deployed over the gutted city: an immense crude sky, scene of some crime or other, a brusk separation parented by nature knowing nothing or understanding nothing requires some concentration except the things the heart can do directly Between the dark & the bed approaching each place or thing my eyes (a body) must accustom themselves anew ...... If a being could be the product of a ground one tastes, then I was Texas developing a vague science of joy or beauty Forgetting the particulars that make it go a paysage abandons a window to get an inkling of the sky or the sky's second elbow | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ESTRANGEMENT by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON MEMORY by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON THE WORD OF AN ENGINEER by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON THE PLACE OF PEACE by EDWIN MARKHAM SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: JOHN WASSON by EDGAR LEE MASTERS HEMLOCK AND CEDAR by CARL SANDBURG HUFFMAN'S PHOTOGRAPH OF THE GRAVES OF THE UNKNOWN AT LITTLE BIGHORN by KAREN SWENSON |