A Town Repeated Elsewhere

reflection in a black brackish oilslick
full spectrum of visible light
a nice thing—beautiful even
but only if you don’t know what it is

cars cut parallel tracks into the street
rainwater on asphalt snick snick wish
jewel studs off mirrorwings bleed into
piss yellow saltlighted night
the distance enormous each pace
asymptotic double that of the next

rain to sleet to snow and all quiets
speckled orange orbs delineate the
passage of each hundred paces or so
neon the entranceways and the
drivers never meet my wandering eye

this awful dead coaltown top of a gash in
the world cut a hundred and fifty years ago
my great great grandfather nine years
old probably with the stereotype brogue
(and why not, for the purposes of a poem)
picking slate sharp out the breaker four
thousand miles from starved home.
compressed carbonic prehistoric life matter
drug cartwise out the bloodslaked
appalachian stone.

the world abounds with terrible places and
this one is maybe a lesser one. you’d
never know anything
ever happened here but it did
didn’t it. it did

like a half finished thought midway caught
irresolute
to no great purpose.