WEBVTT

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This next poem is
called "The Horseshoe."

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I can't read the small
print in the scrapbook.

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Does this say,
relinquishing all bats,

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feeling faint on the balcony?

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There is so much to
be corrected here,

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so many scribbles and
grumbles, blind premonitions.

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How does one interpret on this
late branch, the unexpected?

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I can see just here that
strength was gathering, perhaps

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even an excess,
and, specifically,

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the heart-rending
detail of the horseshoe

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found propped against
the windowsill.

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Years of toil to
find the right angle,

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I'm almost rigid with
anticipation, maneuvering as

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at an opera intermission.

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Stropping the razor, occasional
whining, exploits of idleness,

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all are clenched against
the teatime eventuality.

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The progenitors with their
inspired plaintive skeletons

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engulf us here
for several pages,

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then sink like migrating hooves.

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What happened to them?

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I trusted their wings,
their heroic gusto methods.

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I am shaving this gossipy
impetus like rigid articles

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away from my face.

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I see the corrections
penciled in.

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I'm privy to their
forgetfulness, a sprawling

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design.

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I look away and project
streaks of hesitant

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chance wherever I look.

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Pulsating veins of
thin planks to help

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me bridge this muscular aria.

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Aslant the tone of life's
dialogue between siestas,

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the horseshoe
diversion is polished,

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its legs degenerating,
athletically anyway.

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It's all in the ankle of
the wind, in breeding bones.

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Scrapbook, I am in the
middle of your hive.

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I must take back
your corrections

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to the mute and infirm
stretches of my own big shave,

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swell the parallel world
with your murky burden, still

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betting against
this charm nailed

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to the side door of a photograph
to ward off, what was it?

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Was it me?

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I don't have to explain to you.

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You're this expert
poetry audience.

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I don't know.

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Everybody else's family seems
to make more sense to them

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than mine does to me.

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I don't know why.

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I've been trying for years to
piece it together a little bit,

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and it just doesn't
make any sense.

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It just doesn't make
any sense at all

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why anybody did anything.

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I mean, would you cross
the prairie, you know,

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2,000 miles or more in a covered
wagon in 1850 if your last name

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was-- if your name was James
Nail to open a hardware store

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in downtown Kansas City, a
city of 500 people and call it

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Nail's?

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[LAUGHS] I mean,
I thought people

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crossed all that distance
to seize land and do

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grand things, [LAUGHS] not to
open up a little nail shop.

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[LAUGHTER]

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