The aural chronicle of this town is written in
jukebox codes and corn miles, the wind
shifting with the harvest and in the bar back
entrance. Everyone here is young in a way,
proud of their coldness in another, and even
so, fixed into the deer bush with the shoes
we chose upon arrival. We were warned
and still we are convinced of our status
as inventors and as casualties. So many
of us left cities for this, bringing all
our versions of shakshuka (mine florid, too
dense). Our language is an interim one
of copays, porch swings, and the deadening
issue, by which, despite our fear of mortality,
we hope not to eventually relax into a lack
of feeling to wane the chasm. So we pay
tips we cannot afford, and acknowledge that
veterinarians are contracted by owners
of animals, not animals. A place that takes
crawling, transcribing, while the music, fire
pit seem to run all night. People here choose
this every day, knowing that in planned
suburbs and merciful cities, they gossip
less but read less also. We aim toward
the pleas of our childhood, to one day live in
a drawn house: big, crowded, ours for
the year. When we arrive, it will be earlier
in the morning than we ever woke all the years
here and we will concede then our self-
serving arguments, these griefs, were illusions.