By Lynne McMahon
(posted Wednesday, April 8)
To hear the poet read “Conspiracy Theory,” click here.
Some local jokester with an education
must have chopped the street sign
no one’s yet repaired, Nth Circle,
it reads in full, pointing to a pointless hell,
half-circle cul-de-sac endlessly turning
around and back. Too easy
to read in the drought-blasted shrubbery
and blistered gutters neighborhood decline,
but that the city or mailmen don’t seem
to mind the new address
so arrests imagination that we slow down
each time to see what new old instructions
there might be to commend to us
the narrow way. Yesterday the Popsicle truck
–I’m not making this up–jettisoned
in the middle of the street
a plastic sheet of smoking ice
in which, if you squinted, you could just make out
two rods, or legs, or haunches coming out.