Tremble

I am mystified by the fingerprints I have left
all over the place just as I am mystified
by the phrase good grief: the story

in stress fractures, leaks, the defaced clock
in the head jarred enough to cross
the one border we all keep an eye on, I confess

I am mystified. See that boy
carrying that girl across the street
and see the way light bounces off them,

see the cars folding themselves into
the flow of residential traffic
like horribly mutated silverfish

rattling with the prayers of the market
or mourning vanished hearths?
I expect to see

each figure decorating experience
trailed by an asterisk
denoting train cars of stuff

embarrassing the vanishing point,
getting it to move backward,
pupils dilating then dilating further,

the woman waving
only cleaning a window
or somehow both.

Can't you feel the fetal stars struggling
to hurl their light, their illegible mercies?
Yeah, I look at the stars.

Not once have they disappointed me,
or replied in a tongue
I could render.

Copyright © 2007 Marc McKee All rights reserved
from Cimarron Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission