JOEL FERGUSON

Obstinate, long night-walk,

a few too many alone.

Lucky love-tap the scruff

of bolt-cuttered chain links, peeled back

by the total pedestrian

and its guardian angel—

just don't forget to duck

on through this makeshift

doorway, to keep blood

from raindrops and puddles,

green-gold of leaves

in lamplight. Tonight,

roads full-up with letters

posted soggy to power poles,

addressed to strangers—

                                               that is, you

                 saw a single envelope

                 with label Dear Pen-Pal

stapled magenta in fluorescence

and port-town calm.

That one missive, not unlike

the countryside, grows its paths

out,

                                               more than

enough to make do in whatever

the opposite of giving up might be.

Lawn chairs are lined up, tuchises planted in the prairie sun

set along the old intercontinental, where commercial

clusters outward from gatherflow of two great rivers. Cruise Night

eternal, hot rods and muscle cars out to brrrap the East-West

up-down traverse of Portage. Commons of the evening parking

lot selling slurpees, plugging speaker systems, billboard shouting the end

of the weekend, newly improved sandwiches. "Honk For My Birth

Day" by the student loan office, the forest fire smoke makes it

a special beauty. Title to failings, the final car

off the line, rusted horn further back, West's East. No ideas

but in ruins... such rabbits and in such numbers sun themselves

on the watered green. Boom and boon to bust just deferred, ever

put off, gaining but never gained round the ringing cloverleaves.

Mid-century cuts through forest ever on, sound barriers

and gardens behind. "People never talk to each other here."

The urb-orb is a plenitude of regions, too, not place but

places. I'm all of a rush in shade and scorch. Mobius strip

of pavement on a Sunday night. How the text moves, a finger

running across this evening, kin to those with their hobby

of counting rabbits, ground squirrel, fox, deer, every specimen

stand-in for the general, unseen figure. No place at all,

parking lot repurposed tomorrow, funny cars tucked away,

lookie-loos slunk homeward, save one in a tailgate phone call: "Love,

Love, there was no real reason for you to put a hundred down."

No, you can't visit, and why would you want to?
Coldest of all pastorals, taken root and leaf

from Montana, the crime scene where the deeds were done
then done again. Via interstate it arrived in limbo

in the form of an Air Force warehouse
outside of Sacramento. I’ve seen the pictures,

anyone can – like an art installation, angled rusticity
in a neutral white space, halogen illumination,

the window above the door poked out (wily Nobody
visits the cyclops). You can't visit, and even if you could

you can't touch it, there's a sign that says "No." Though
Reddit scuttlebutt says that it's a popular place

to hook up during AFB Christmas parties,
the shack is certain to give up no further secrets.