Miscellanea of Whatever Reservations I Had About the Reservoir
BY BRANDON RUSHTON
It’s just because, at first glance, I could’ve called it natural.
Suppose all the suppositions are accurate.
Limnologists still count the years
numerically and so on. So on and so far as I can’t
stand the view of trotlines. Listen, despite everything
they’ve told you, happiness is a long shot.
Consider the daylight, our diminished rates of accuracy.
I don’t presume to know much about crossroads.
Sometimes the bullet just finds itself in the wrong back.
Back and forth between the backyards of the subdivision
a bird we can’t identify taxis fish, sits on a nest
of shelled chromosomes. Weather is indicative of the winter
we’ve been having. I can see your bronchitis
through your nightgown. Just as red as I’d expect
the lung-full of algae blooms the children carry
across town you might hear the PA system
from the high school homecoming. If you catch a glimpse
of me in the grandstands, chalk it up to apparition.
I’ve been up all night with the old man whose come home
from the bar where he’d spent the evening gambling
his mind and lost it.
I used to follow you into the abandoned building. There is no story
to follow that up with. The second floor of our two-story house
is water logged. Warped floorboards don’t speak when they splinter.
Quit telling me you have a problem with empathy, I watched you
wipe a tear from your eye the day they pushed the dirt
back into the quarry. Whatever reservations I had: cancel them.
Truth is: I don’t care. Let’s all just sit here and anticipate
a little more apoca-prophecy. Until then, rain running in
under the shingles. Ghosts snickering in the attic.
