Flea market on the fourth of July
makes everything feel like a drought.
Fat men and old milk cans
signs to put up in your living room, maybe
I promise
to still
grab your BUTT
when we’re old and wrinkly
potato skins sold fried apple pies
skin, gravel, aisles, stalls
even the hydrangeas set out
in front of a man with a microphone who sings, raggedly,
The Star Spangled Banner.
A dog, licking himself, does not rise.
Everything political curses randomly
The fat men finger butterfly knives in t-shirts with guns on them.
Flags wave in the background.
Blankets Here Ratchet Sets
the star-spangled banner.
Later, an old dam at the end of a weedy trail.
Concrete’s cracked
the water still rolls over it,
even water
made to do its part.
little rapids give out in algae pools and mud flats
gnats and flies
everything feels like a drought this fourth of July.
I thought the singing birds, the dragonflies in complex dance above the green, dammed stream were only
foolish, blissful
unaware of drought and fire,
these other damnations.
Thunder comes over the highway,
black cloud cuts a mile across the blue
orange light splits that, then
blasts of rain,
spatter-blast and scatter-blast water coming free at last
overflow the dam, aisles, gravel, stalls,
wash away flags and butterfly knives, t-shirts cursing randomly, and leave
the people free.
But that’s wishful thinking, isn’t it?
In the neighbor’s back yard, bottle rockets puff themselves up,
and in a drought, we say
we have no need for thunder.
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