Rubrics like cold canvas valentines with flickering fingertips
three-ring circus notebooks gathered into class
bric-à-brac interventions in dot matrix holsters spread over
the sutures of repeated relocations
procured at a premium—
A long brown cry awaiting assessments
Further baselines are enrolled in vacant lot enrichment periods
funneling refugee flows into box lunch rationality
Sincerity has been overdrawn
rationing out magic markered contracts
to parents in downturned tornadoes
More years pacing the condensed labyrinth
whose tabulations stop at 18
All the while the corpus towers upward
Would we halt the zeitgeist excavations
across this rubicon valley
Unearth the pupils for triggers at
Van der Waals attractions
Bunsen conflagrations
Petri releases
To a city of stone clefts
a forest woven with hard-wrung memories
a world without raised lines
Andy Oram
March 3, 2025