Dargie Anderson
Minus two on the car thermometer.
Out the window, it's Kansas, as usual,
except the hawk over the river
is puffed up to twice its normal size
perched above a white rubble field
where the river used to be.
Minus two on the car thermometer.
The roads are dry, traffic sparse, not unusual,
except a wrecker's
easing a banged-up Nissan onto its bed,
and ten miles later another, cranking up a Ford.
Had the cold itself dragged each car off its line?
Minus two on the car thermometer.
I'm fine, there's nothing unusual,
except it's apparent, the world's subtracted,
drained of something we depend on—
ruddiness, moisture. The air catches at my throat.
It's the kind of day the local news shows up
in the yard of a man who, having dragged out
an old space heater, plugged it into bad wiring
and ends up wrapped in a blanket
standing agape as everything burns down.
Minus two on the car thermometer. There's no disaster.
The world appears in almost every way the same.