Buying up the bad debt

—an edgelands

in the air—then returning

 

the ocean to circulation

after a fresh

coat of paint : circuit

 

bent canary song, petcoke

for export, préliminaires2,

jetwash out of my

 

aftermarket, hydrofluoro

carbon mouth.

At night the sky gets

 

snagged in the trees it

goes back

up in the morning.

 

The blast radius

center everywhere.

On foot

through the city as a

live-fire exercise—

windblown,

snowblind,

like a negative

yanked from the dark—:

 

not

an avatar in an environment

but the figure

 

as ground   for the ground.

Andrew Zawacki was a 2016 Howard Foundation fellow in poetry. His most recent poetry book is Videotape (Counterpath). His new translation of Sébastien Smirou, See About (La Presse), earned grants from the NEA and the Centre National du Livre.