Lauren Camp

Out in the sky, no one sleeps. No one, no one.
—Federico García Lorca

Acres of weeds to our view and every minute
needs reminding
that we haven’t yet been erased.
A birdcage floats over
a scumbled sky. Just another day
bothered by its own matter and sometimes
this is enough
of a glimpse of what’s left.
We’re living in a summer
thrown to an oven. Soon even
the woman painting the blue
of her roof has grease on her fingers.
A man stirs a pot and the town
tips sideways. Who are the innocents?
We evaluate our mortgage
to see what we owe
on the trees. Turn flour
to muffins in the middle of a great
battle we’re having with disappointment.
A sprung center of spit-back hollers
and harrowing to refigure doubt, then a late supper
handed over in crinkly paper. We settle
to gowning in. One of us admits the thin night.
That’s what emptiness has become.
There’s a constant gristle of air.
A stone moon parties the dark.
Around us a perfect landscape of ruins.

First posted by the Kenyon Review.