poem: late july

a deep buffering thing, rolling in — I have my
legs clefted tight, driving, I describe
the land as the armpit of the earth flopped into
the arm of the earth, freckled and brown against
flat blue sky: porcelain tile squeezed behind
hills, chipping fresco. where are the Experiences where
are the Summer Experiences; I reread books I
first read upstairs, in heat, in my
childhood bedroom, every future dripping
down green walls; I read them at work,
I read cyclically. the fainting earth winks
at me, as we come through: drive and drive and drive, the
allure of vanlife is not the castrated-photos but
the flattening out, the beating-down and
obliteration of the self by a wide dirt
full throttle deep-in-the-throat American road. the monastery
is a call to the death of the self. The book squeezed
in, between customers, is a careful building back
up of the self, fragile half-realized
steps: I do not want to think about myself but to
feel my body solidly rooted under me and
It seems in a great unwelcome curse that
this is only possible through thought.