The Syntax of the Second Chance

Your poems make
all the right
gestures, she said.
I'm just not sure
it's really poetry.

We were driving to the place
her oldest and bestest girlfriend stays.
The roads were dark and wet,
and the rain had stopped.

There was only one
break in the clouds

They pretty much do want you,
she said, but to serve in silence.
That song was obviously written by a man.

The belt of Orion
aligns with this road;
that's some kind of omen
is what I was thinking.

We drove by Sassy Suds--
walk-ins welcome,
appointments preferred.

I was thinking about the eight
times I tried to climb
back into this conversation
and her bed after the last
and final word of rain.

I was thinking about a pot-bellied professor
who left his wife
and took up with a young graduate student.

We take four-sixty-seven through Edwards
all the way to Raymond, she said.
Dorothy said it used to be so nice,
but she's thinking
like fifty years ago,
when she moved here.

I was thinking
the Mississippi flood
of National Poetry Month 2011.

Sorry about that
racket this morning,
I said. My dog Blue
croons like a drunk
troubadour when it storms.
He thinks he's a goddamn poet.

What, Edwards?
Just a little town, she said.

Coopersville-Michigan-size?

I don't know where that is,
she said.

I was thinking fucking bastard,
dim your headlights over a hill,
dumb-fuck.

Take a left at the Pabst Blue Ribbon sign
on J's Tavern., she said, and drive
behind Hinds Community College
all the way to Sonic.

Tomorrow, the river is rising.
Tomorrow, the river is rising.

They're like
right here,
downtown --
at the corner of Dupree
and Port Gibson Street.

Tomorrow,
the river
is rising.