in these obvious rooms in
these upstate towns where the factories
are empty and the windows broken
and meaningless

your boyfriend in jail or
your father found dead in his
lover's driveway or the absolute clarity of
cold white sunlight through
dirty windshields

the name of every dead-end street
you've ever lived on
tattooed down the insides of your wrists

the radio dripping static into every silence

washing the feet of christ clean
but not his heart
and not his hands and
there is this man waiting for
your sister on the church steps

there is her face in
the rear window of a car moving
slowly away

a boy throwing stones
at a bleeding dog

the graffiti on the sides of
abandoned railroad cars and the
absence of motion

the indifference of the sky

pale yellow or dull white
and the baby asleep as the
mother gets in the car and leaves

a woman found shot to death
in the field behind her house

the phone ringing
as you walk in the door

nothing but quiet laughter
when you answer


� 2004 by John Sweet