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over the temple encrusted in
an exoskeleton of scaffolding and cranes,
over the lake bed’s lunar flats
where I mistook pickled, half-buried ducks
for driftwood and dry grass,
over my glass hotel where I scrub
white brine dust off my black suede shoes.
I walked and walked across an endless
sand and salt plain, between the lot of
parked cars and the salt-broth water,
tiny scattered people moving as
slow and distant from each other
as stars in a constellation.
I still hadn’t reached water by the time
the sun dipped to the first mountain but
I turned around anyway, anxious
to outwalk the absolute dark.
Tidal forces pull me into the car and
back toward the city,
moon over its motherboard of lights,
mountains like teeth behind it.
Weak sun, bold moon,
salt as purifier, salt as punisher.
My shoes wear a ring of white,
my hair a dry rime of silver down the middle.
The moon rises over glittering towers and salt crystals
as a low sun slides into unswimmable water.
I might be driftwood. I whisper like dry grass.
All week people have been distant as stars
and shifting like sand.
I haven’t seen the same face twice.
Jennifer Blackledge works in the automotive industry and lives just south of Detroit. She has an MFA from Brown University and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in JAMA, I-70 Review, Scientific American, The Lake, Verdad, Kestrel, Twelve Mile Review, SWWIM and elsewhere. Read more at http://www.jenniferblackledge.com.
THE CITY KEY 