it’s a weird lip in her voice—

grassy, like she’s standing on 

 

a hill near a city park bathroom

in a part of her home

 

city you haven’t 

seen. she’s taken

 

you seven times and you 

keep noting the ballfield 

 

and water treatment facilities

spotting the modular suburbs

 

and dairy farms from the reservoir 

ridge: you’ll go again next week

 

to ask her dad’s permission 

: old school, you drive and listen 

 

on the Schuylkill Expressway: 

having your ride home conversation 

 

with her, when you park 

you’ll see her shape with 

 

the second floor light behind it 

through the windows : 

 

for now you listen and layer your

affective city over the actual one

 

stuck in some traffic, drumming

your fingers to no music 

 

you’re between a poultry truck

and a harmless white sedan  

 

sip from an occasional water bottle 

playing I-spy with the highway 

 

citing some items in her voice

plus a few along the road 

bottling facilities 

YMCA campground

 

area codes of the stars 

people getting speckled 

 

in the multistory brewpub 

pausing on their long flat drive 

 

then you’re picturing what 

the region’s aerial grid would be 

 

if every box of diapers

or boil in bag creamed spinach 

 

lit up in trunks 

and stomachs and domiciles 

 

: you’re in the grocery with a 

parking lot, a block from home 

 

salad, three limes, Bazooka Joe

with the comics 

 

on your time or off it :

off dairy for a week, see if

 

it helps: you’re trying out 

being tireless, what if 

 

every sweat you sweat or file

you filed that day appeared 

 

in the information of your eye 

or your body temperature did 

 

or the sentence “my hands are 

cold” or my tax refund 

 

is sufficient, or we can angle 

toward the music well enough 

 

to keep going now that we 

dependably get each other to dance