HOLOGRAM, AUBADE Poem by Ken Babstock

A.M. Axe or adze? Blame the tang on Stelco.
A crow's shadow shoots
the full length of the black locust —
down, then right back up it again.
The dew already burnt off the carrots.
Dog's nose, or detonator tip
of an upturned shuttlecock like
something silo'd under the mown lawn.

Original Thingist, remember Texas?
Jackrabbits mimicking oil derricks, to less
effect, though they suffered the earth's shudders.
I just make it up —

cheap Cuervo, flea flickers in shopfront chapels, and
the tumoured bench seat of a Rambler with a history.

What if it's all meant to work
the way it's fashioned now, no
other binding property or force?

In the coming work stoppage, front-end
loaders will dragon off
to pick their teeth barracked in the municipal
pit. There's a food cache near
the tire swing. Crow knows you
know it knows you know.

When the prop shark died its tooth
became first talisman then decorative
then forensically interesting
in a two-part episode of Hoarders.

World-view of a killhorse, loosehorse,
not that you ever saw it coming
but you saw a Cassandra coming.

Quarter mile from the Polish men's choir
of frogs near a culvert, their kekking and blanging
bewilderment's agent on earth. Night's idiot
vestments now piled in the gorge. What
an accomplishment, the scarred softball!
Stand inside the dome
of sumac — what, phantom, do you feel?