this is home, i guess.
at least the book i’m reading is funny,
with creatures from planets so unknown,
and irony galore, at least the book i’m
reading is funny, and at least i
sort of understand what it’s like to be
transplanted. and i can take joy in the fact
that i had warning, more than several minutes
that the demolition of home
which once meant topeka, kansas
doesn’t mean the demolition of my planet.
there is still lubbock, texas. at least the book
i’m reading is funny because i think i would grow
tired of the non-stop sexual victims unit drama
brought to me by dvr cable and a nice new tv.
at least the book i’m reading is funny,
because the people here are too charming
and not quite quirky enough, though i love
that the used bookstore man is excited to take
banana-nut muffins from a frequent customery
because they are the kind
with so many preservatives that they
will keep for months. and i am excited to live
in a city where i have not yet pillaged
my favorite authors at the used book stores
where two tom robbins books i have not yet read
wait on a shelf at a place where i like the owner
because i suppose when you are his age,
self-preservation may be a vitamin you eat
in the form of a muffin that never goes bad.
and at least the book i’m reading is funny, or
else i may have to explore the secret world
of the asian markets’ fish deep freezes. i
cannot begin to explain the joy of cringing
as i open not one but four mystery freezers.
i expect to find cats or boars heads. but instead,
just piles and piles and piles of frozen eels.
some of them wrapped in wax paper but one,
just staring up at me. as though it’s an answer
to the question “what recipe requires cooked pork blood?”
the real answer is some sort of korean food. and at least,
the book i’m reading is funny. because this city
is like a photograph in parts, and i’m
falling in love with that but i fall too easily in love
with cities. like a toynbee tile excited for summer
when its back warms up and by fall it is wrapped in the mortar
of a new concrete jungle, and oh this is living!
until a new jackhammer uproots it to make room
for a new sprint center. every city is changing, and i suppose
this one for the better because now
i live in it, now, this is home,
i guess.