Guedda Hassan Mohamed, Elasticity (vector art)
Nearly April, and the dusk, real dusk,
runs late into the evening now,
still blue in the sky as the nickel-iron
moans of a pedal steel wind and rise
from a dark room at the edge of town,
and I drive. I can feel that blue, not chill
but the cool, and know the difference
even as my shoulders start to prickle
beneath my dress. Some of us are always
riding with the ghost, but I’ve got
the wheel tonight, and an eye on the stars
and their steady transmission, the pulse
past the spires of pines and the shades
of the water towers. And the crickets.
And, sure as the crickets, an armadillo
stricken on the road beside my house,
who I’ve seen hollowing day by day
into a studded suit. Ruin and rot
creep into it always, can even come to seem
a peculiar glamor. But on a clear night
you can almost hear the other, older
sweet high lonesome coming in
on the air, like a signal from some station
past the border of this world and the next.