they will lean that way forever

Blue Jeans For Sale in the Trailer Window

and pour from the parked Airstream
like tubes orphaned off the grid.

We have come with these sodas
of mint and marmalade, these
somewhat easy parallels to Rome,

to blame a billion barrels
of banana pudding, wafers mixed
with cardboard and soybean oil,
hours gifted to nutrition design.

We blame much of what we eat
from Tupperware at one or two,
a window open on bats and trains,
a wind more cowboy than a pearl button.

And everything is stalked by antique shops.
They clomp past streetlights, touting whale nets.

Someone moves a spoon past dentures,
the years down on their shoulders like
hands. Then swallows. Bottoms out.

The hands on your shoulders like
listen, no, listen: we are a
flicker thing, a thing kneaded in-
to an aggregation of area codes,
familiar restaurants and hymnal hooks.

Wait, this is a true thing that once
heard may not fit the provision of hope:
picnic groves capped the trolley lines.
Then carousels. Okay. But then chalk.

And were they razed to fill now
with trailer sales? Sails to tarp?
Is the freeway a strobe of blinkers?
Will the turnoff lanes sag and give way?

And who then will scavenge the axles?
The airbags? The blues? Dawn, dawn,
you will not miss how sure we woke.