justducky1

we are all twenty three point five degrees shy of even, a people off-kilter and invariably prodigal, timid as our buffalo. you have a hometown, i say out loud while driving in it, and you murmur something about murder, the dusky war over your head. you say those birds don't even know about the obliquity of the ecliptic, and here they are, trying to change it with all their weight in the sky. twenty three point five, you repeat, your mouth around it gingerly as a psalm, as a lioness with cubs, and we keep driving. there are sights: a stripped-wire cherry tree, its fragile arms tipped with ravens, their children unstrung and clinging