Paul Hoover

American Ruins

Dumbed down but
handsome, a storm
makes its way

through the spark
of power lines
and its own

roar. A car
filled with dogs
passes on your

right, makes the
turn, hits the
ditch, but continues

on its journey.
The general sense
of things converging

has never been
less, yet meaning's
not undone by

the junction of
two roads. Other
newer things are

the world as
you found it--
pricked by the

heat, the dust
bin of theory
and a sudden

death of story.
You can hear
a map unfolding

like days of
rain, the gush
of metal in

a trailer park,
one thick tree
absent from its

station, and stands
of flowers touched
by nothing but

their own cheap
scent. The kitchen
creaks. Stillness is

complete. Traced in
its remains, rain
is also written

on the lake
and shore, on
a contract drawn

briefly from its
sleeve, on nine
wide miles of

riven space. The
mind's green debris
and Turtle Creek

are packed with
silt and party
goers. As deer

nose south, the
dullest of facts
speaks to its

zenith with miraculous
gestures the swifts
pour from. Around

the burning house,
a normal grey
day is intense

with indifference.
You spend all
day tying what's

not this to
what's not that,
yet swallows still

turn, nearly transparent,
in the damp
summer's mouth;

flash back flat
to fill your
eye. The shadow

of a hand
stands for desire
in the nothing

sun. Love is
form, a life
so sweet decay

cannot conceive.
Rumors of rumors
and layers of

belief. When the
gods are German
at their rival

fires, the language
fact in its
weaving and bending

is a self
northwest, if
not to say

central. At the
intersection of time
and vine, rock

rhymes sky in
shape and displacement,
but the words

won't come for
lack of science.
Because the field

is full and
the town quite
empty, you gape

at the leaves
in windows acting
just like leaves.

---

Paul Hoover is the author of nine poetry collections including Rehearsal in Black and Winter (Mirror). He is also editor of the literary magazine New American Writing and the anthology Postmodern American Poetry (W. W. Norton). His essay collection Fables of Representation is forthcoming from University of Michigan Press. contents | next