(Notes on) A Suburban Landscape
Where dwelling is a mode
Of citizenship
Not self
Not text / landschaft
Because the world
Has been always
Made even not here
But the proprietary between-places
That poetry occupies
‘Filling [one]’—like Lewis or
Clark—‘with vague cravings
Impossible
To satisfy’
Privacy
Beyond the formal
Supervised
Without authority
The daft all-over metropoles
And their back-
Ground of ordinances
Gridding the rural
Mile square mile
Mostly what we notice mostly:
Slightly interesting events
Things to be scared of
Persons with dogs
Taking the place
Of reference anxiety
It’s true:
If the way through
Were not also the way in
We would be lost
Taking Turns
Soon I too will
Carry my string
Into the wilderness
Without
Useful language
Or handsome shadow
I know change
Is not easy
But I resent
The silence
My body makes
Space around it to live in
To have an ideal
When I get back there
To the terror I hope
That song
You used to sing
When you
Thought I wasn’t
Listening still
Has the old
Stardusted magic
Eric’s work has recently appeared in a number of periodicals, including Ploughshares, Agni, and Denver Quarterly. My book The Hummingbird Hour was published in October.
