Rain and night, Minneapolis,
us, and four suitcases.
Greyhound and a city bus.
Clipped roll in the night. A fade.
Looking west from a pink bedroom
full of linens for a guest,
my eyelids sagging, colored
red from liquor and cinnamon sticks.
If it was noble
to correct the market
the unemployed would be given medals,
and we’d wear them.
Thrum of an airplane overhead.
Recall its low-flying drone again,
and my fingers guide the wind around her flame.
We are lonely in this manmade valley.
Teens clang and hang like bats
from the half-dome batting cage behind our backs.
The water table underneath permeates
the sheds that shake beside the lakes.
This common source of poisoning
affects all things that drink from me.
Here’s a tip for the welfare line:
a note on letterhead from the mayor.
*pieces of this poem were originally published as “Track 16: Half Light II (No Celebration) by Arcade Fire.” in Opossum
Matthew DeMarco lives in Chicago. His work has appeared on Poets.org and in Ghost City Review, Landfill, Sporklet, Glass, and elsewhere. Poems that he wrote with Faizan Syed have appeared in Jet Fuel Review, Dogbird, and They Said, an anthology of collaborative writing from Black Lawrence Press. He tweets sporadically from @M_DeMarco_Words.
South Broadway Ghost Society 