Timothy Ashley Leo

                                                                 
   midway
      take the ticket to the tundra 
      ⸺ take it, the ticket 
      the take-it ticket.
      this isn’t the laundromat 
      this isn’t time’s square
      the end-all be-all place
      to be and to seem ⸺ no

      no checked luggage, no coup
      contrecoup, just a quick fix
      and a permanent one,
      all the walls of every temple
      every bucking horse, every
      turnkey and stub.
      the seatbelt:          click it.

      here’s an industrial estuary,
      a logging river, a channel
      cut to the power plant.
      an immaculate grid and landfills
      the shape of ziggurats,
      libraries too ⸺ a rooster’s tail
      burning a horizon plume white

      grey-blue. ur, baby, ur. 
      love the tanker run up 
      on the shoal, iron tailings
      sifting beneath the boot.
      love the rust-rubbed fibers
      of this shirt. oh, ohio, oh
      golf course ⸺ oh sand-trap

      municipal funds, fertilized lot.
      oh railyard oh tarmac of ware-
      house and tarp-covered hills
      of salt. this is the terminal.
      this is big cat country
     ⸺ or was. here reams of
      razor wire collect hoarfrost. 
    
      nice ice, nice chain, nice 
      mullet my guy, what does
      god mean now what doesn’t
      the author know that we do, do
      we trust eyewitnesses or
      privilege centuries of divining
      intention. everybody here believes
         
      we’d do quite well 
      in an apocalypse, some would
      make a killing. some irradiation
      warms not our bones but this
      confusion of skin and person.
      our fields remain snowed-over,
      not a one fashioned into a square

     ⸺ though each is enclosed 
      by a pleasing use of line
      and dissymmetry. a rural text
      set in soothing font, sans serif.
          
    

   
 
  
  missed eclipse
    [  ] wanted to respond to the internet
    but didn’t know how. [  ] wrote a letter
    to AOL, [  ] dm’d the weatherman. 
    the search engine suggested marriage,
    polygamy. the sound suggested time.

    all the coordinates appeared in red
    and green, [  ] & we : too colorblind 
    to see but now they’re there. the plane
    keeps flying even when it’s white out,
    brighter than a mood lamp, colder

    than a solar array. nicotine, of all things,
    still gets us going. can you believe that?
    no jacuzzi, no sauna at the spa, no 
    curiosity about holes. an inner child
    was found and found and found,

    static in the crowd. the officer gripped
    a wrist, the vest was phosphorescent.
    pulling the fire-alarm was mistaken
    for a cry. [  ], without a family,
    was panic, panic, panic. beyond

    panic, sound. beyond sound, an index
    of titles. an index of last lines.
Timothy Ashley Leo is the author of The Dog's Letter, out with Ugly Duckling Presse. His work appears in Annulet, Conjunctions, Denver Quarterly, Lana Turner, Narrative and elsewhere. He lives in Chicago, where he helps edit dialogist.