Life in our area changed without changing much. We confessed to whereabouts unknown. That we contrived to prove we were there. That we’d also gone somewhere else. Yet when we got back, we wound up where we were, on the floor. Indeed, what I meant to say was that’s maybe another thread. You arrive, someone else said, at a point where nothing changes. Not a point, a jetty, an out-of-work lighthouse, birds of distant origin swimming at the sky. That’s when it gets tough. I looked around for the next room, where a party throbbed. Some partygoers were leaving. See the road unwinding before them as they go, headlamps lit, driven carefree round the roundabout, a recent traffic improvement.



*



When someone asks directions, I’m helpful but confusing. Echoes make me feel like a crowd, like a vault underwater. Always it seems someone comes along who got here before me, to remind me again how strange we are. Pale horizons beamed back from our Martian vacation leave me in awe of the utter red vacancy that surrounds my sturdy craft. Every morning, in the back of the shop, the register’s green zeroes glow. When faced with a member of the nation’s exploding workforce, I just say, No thanks.



*





The memory of being haunted haunted them. If a body meet a body. A rally happened in the park. It was a rally for the rallies before it, a rally like a sedentary cloud. Nobody knew what to do so speeches erupted. Hands raised. The rally put bodies on the ground. They rallied for proximity, the body that bodies make.



*



What’s next after the last frame’s hung. Me and a window and a Friday. Three crows on a black branch. Remember when cars were called motorcars? No, why would I—do I look like Calvin Coolidge? Between the inexplicable and the ineffable: My house. Must gear up.



*



They sat on a porch but that era has passed. They relied on a sense of direction they didn’t have. Destiny was fine to avoid. Like Venetians, they peered unseen through blinds at dusk. Tarmacadam was new, the highlands laned with elms. Entering a dark room was like meeting someone important. One celebrates, they said, the self-made man. A town big enough for the two of them, in the crow-charged air.



*



Follows the moment when you don’t know what to play. Time for a round on the dream couch. They’re out there somewhere, certainly, the tech confirms it. Fog won’t break over Fall River. Yet a sudden left and the sky increases. How about let’s road test that new I.D. We’ll emerge from Worcester like twin sunsets in reverse. The junket left half an hour ago. Well, that kills lunch.