Deanna Dorangrichia, Fall On A Dining Room Table
Near the train tracks
and Chen’s Chinese Restaurant
there’s a blue and gold plaque with your name on it,
a row of houses for sale, a man pushing a tin baby
in a canopy stroller, and a boysenberry bush in bloom.
On Tuesdays the train passes,
frightens the stray cats.
And, the sewage system
grows old inside the belly of this town
where contaminated water drives a wedge of iron
through Pennsylvania history.
The snails are Dutch, the slugs are French,
and a steamroller passes while men
crush the bones of Carlisle,
while the ghosts of confederate soldiers
and Ohio Indians separate us,
while salesmen suck me in
to the line of traffic on Route 11,
while the shape of your face and tricorne hat
hang in a plume of exhaust trailing from tailpipes
there are hundreds of pots and pans
stacked on the back of a truck
idling in front of my house.