Michael Chitwood

Even two years later, she still gets correspondence
addressed to him. Correspondence. This like that.
...

The one on the ground lofts two at a time
with just the right lift for them to finish
their rise as the one on the scaffold turns
...

Here were said the words men say.
The oil stove winked its slit black eye;
it knew they did not have their way.
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Small-town AM station,
morning show,
still doing a gospel number every hour.
Who's listening?
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Two days into the flood
they appear, moored against
a roof eave or bobbing caught
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Ghost moon in the upper right-hand corner
where we used to write our names—
Is it quiet there, Tom,
adrift from your drift of ashes?
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The Happy Handyman's van
has just come down my street.
...

has given him a shirt
with his name on it.
Such is the way
of municipalities
...

A Coke bottle stopped
with a sprinkle head
sat at one end of the board.
She'd swap iron for bottle,
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White night,
distance is done in.
Is this Heaven,
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The shed is out back.
The old tools hang from nails,
manning their stations.
...

Down the Havoline, Quaker State aisle
goes Jefferson, if his shirt can be believed.
The red stitching over the right pocket
...

From cutting the nuts out of a bull calf's bag with a Barlow,
from laying case knives on a dress pattern,
from running a trotline and baiting the hooks with gone liver,
from mashing a tobacco worm into a green blot,
...

The ribbed black of the umbrella
is an argument for the existence of God,
that little shelter
...

Not for nothing
are we given at least as much
sense as God gave a goose,
...

We were behind on the job
so waited out the rain in the pickup.
Because the backhoe would mire
...

One way or another, we must all leave
I said to a room, a room empty of people,
save for me. There were two doors to the room,
...

Uncles worked pocket knives
to rake the grease of work
from beneath their nails,
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They'll show you how to milk a mouse.
They'll see if your ears have any gristle in them.
They'd stop in a burning house
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On the back porch
the wind slams the screen door coming in.
The first time I learned the lesson of the seasons
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