Amy Zug

Backing Out

the car, the car, the car and the car, and the road.
this guy one night tells his X: let's go back out
again. she says OK, sure. few minutes more
she's got a knee on his hand, and she throws it
into reverse. all the time after that his eyes
fix on the glowing R, remembering:
what had it been like to watch someone
reading about horses, lying on a bed between two
windows in June. it starts with poetry, stops perhaps
as an airplane drones away at the bottom of a plain
and particular day. but perhaps that is only a sentence.
perhaps this is only a sentence. perhaps this
is only a sentence is only a sentence.
very softly now, with nothing but no sound left:
will he land on the road, will he land
in the car, will he start this or that tired
wreck up again

and again and again and again, as is the way,
she has been told that, well, that she has been told.
a certain degree of symmetry is of course involved
in the act of folding
oneself away within the eyelash of the beloved.
one might even say beauty, one might even say cruelty,
luxury, pain. one might even say any number of things.
any number of things. see? a certain degree.
but why should it not be the fingernail?
and why not the fingernail moon? this is random, that's all,

I think: horses, horses and the eternal process of standing
on the exact center of the particular random fingernail room
which at any, at all moments could become your wildest,
your most small and folded dream

come true, standing centered thinking of one lost thought
you know you had this June, you know you had ten years
past. if you wait hard enough, it will land in your lap.
perhaps.