Our country is drenched in oil

and your body is

                           Flint–

has rubbed together

all the dry books you read.

                           You learned nothing

                            about how polluted

                            friendly people can be

like too much lead in water.

I dreamt that I broke my key
off in the side door
         and not for the first time.
I stood there,
         wide-eyed and open-mouthed,
looking at the fat bit of bronzed metal
in my hand and the jagged
         jut
sticking out of the off-white door.

Our town ventriloquist
amazed without a dummy,
putting his words into the mouths
of local people and their pets.

Politicians on TV certainly benefited.
It took skill, so few of us even bothered moving our lips
after a few years of silence and/or doubt.

Especially uncomfortable conversations
he would have with himself

when neighbors weren’t around to hear.

We collect in murders, spy
the eaves, survey the alleys,

streets, sidewalks. We receive
those who belong, flag those

who don’t. It was only last week
that the mother with the hawkish

nose, the mother with the talon grip,
called her small child. Mittens trailed...