There are parts of this country where a fly could live forever

Scars like bookmarks just to read and remember

Like dog-eared pages in a frail book with a frail spine in a frail house

Like dusty words inside your mouth.


There's cadence in these pages.


There are parts of this country where I can't die fast enough

Every mile another novel punctuated in my blood

Thesis statements embedded in my flesh

This argument lays me to rest.


There's cadence in these pages.


We can measure the ephemery, hands on flesh, muscle memory. There's a story in every wrinkle; a map in every fold. Fingerprints are like crow's feet poems. A fracture, a bone breaks. A knuckle cracks like pen to page. Like ice across a brittle lake. The tachometer's a metronome, a typewriters tempo. Lays black ink into bone, a typewriters tempo.