Gathering, by JKD

After Jonathan Regier's The Lake to the Sea

That lake, sticks of perfume, little steel chains or skulls or delicate tattoos.

Not to replace glass bongs, the state’s founded allegations about a red Buick sedan.

1995 spinning round in my head, as if I were selling doctors things I refuse to forget.

I’m just a science-fiction man, static clinics hanging on a map of Nebraskan invasion.

That snow’s planing far over an ancient sea, or perhaps within, under a glass dome.

Truck stops or dime stores, I’d order a catalogue for Katie if it’d do any good now.

Start over with the pulmonary state of motivation, my own arterial waters, a clamp.

How’d it be then, snapped flat, angry, forgetting I’m bold enough to grow a red Atlantis.

If to stop were to build houses for forever, to weather winters without any cigarettes.

True, I could never sleep out here without the rumble of engines, this stain of oil.

I say, “If it gets bad, once, as in a trinket in the bottom of a cereal box.”

You tell me to just crack the ice, check the inventory, stockpile whatever remains to recollect.

See, there’s only part of an engine in this 2-seater sedan, a sign of grace, a grey scratch on your scarification.

Perhaps this is about bats or the wings of a creature yet to define, things or time which flaps past like something I once said to you or then.