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A Breeze from Ronkonkoma Station
by Evan Hanlon
The smell of wheat-paste in the hair of bicycle punks
Folded over like savannah beneath the tree—
They’re the only ones worth their salt,
Horse-bristle after only a day,
But never much more, as if the apple itself
Had spoken against it in fleshy golden tones.
You must believe you are a force of nature,
Not unlike the swamp legend, so shrouded in blues
Even our fathers forget how to talk to it.
The front street waits for a belltower to rise
While the back streets court the jungle and nurses
The word in shadow breezy tones.
The grail marks reveal the shape, the stands, the secrets
I always wanted, left over from the prisonaire’s
Performance, strutting through the dust like a boulevardier
Without concern for the nuances of typography.
Impression is the word they have always given me
A pound of sand at a time.
The sky neons before the rooftops raise high.
Arc-lights are everywhere between the haze and people
Moving the apparatus one by one. Someone calls out for
Sleeves, but the rally is too close to the sea for that—
I hear rattling more akin to a bug than rust, so closely wed
To the aging wood that comes to you in the blackness.
Ridgeback comes the call from over the doom
Where rust sets into the blast carcass.
An old rattle-cage is thirsty under cable
With ciphers kicking up the dervish in waltz.
Spindles click with the drop out worn through—
The volume really starts hitting the bottom.
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