The Barns of My Childhood

The outside world doesn’t exist.
There was a single light bulb above
That the wind made shake.

Balls of cobwebs, bottles of HEAT,
A Mobil gas can with its red Pegasus,
Lump of corn smut in a jar,

And in the loft a pyramid of hay,
Which in different times was slept in
By transients on their way to nowhere.

I wasn’t going anywhere either,
Ten-years old, ball cap and muddy shoes,
Peering through the window, which was

Like looking through dry skin
Lit by a flashlight with a dying bulb.


The line of the tungsten prairie hung
Like a napkin from the sky,
And its blood meal entourage,

Bakelite trees, the uranium glass sun strip
On the old pickup’s windshield,
Flakes of chromium on the silos.