Andrew Goldfarb & Andrew Felsinger

Lost Hills

He came into the store because it was the only option left.

In the store the lights became like moths

                                          In the electric light
Famous is as famous does

                              How do these shoes look on me

Where are those specials

          What use sympathy

                                The door rang announcing itself
In the integrated puzzle there was the keeper's face

                                               With feathers for a fanciful feast
                                                Platters of unbuttered bread
                                                And cabbages in heads

Somewhere a clock is chiming
           Our transaction has become protracted
                     When commerce is complex and unfruitful

The unbuttoned sky rained for want of other things

One sickly submarine crew
                                       trapped inside a pack of cigarettes
                                                                                       worth four dollars

He began to smoke, creating edges against the night
                                                                              their wives
                                                                              will never know
                                                                              what became of them
remembered faintly mother loading her baby into a boat box

of better, bubbles,

                   that old refrain of shirtless namesakes bringing feckless luggage

the saltless crackers fed to birds by the bus stop

                   this army singing toward a black and noble gun

when streetcars, in their sorrow, collapse

                   murmuring long epiphanies towards an uncaring sky

because the mood of these times calls for a sneer under streetlamps

                   while eating from the vending machines of Laundromats

where one dark and spectral package sits on the counter, waiting to be opened

                   by hands whose eyes are closed

and the airships of my love contain a theft

"You're on the other side of the world again." Her face contradicts her laugh. The hiding places are getting fewer every day from exposure and the finding out of the enquiring mind. The systematic chimes that peal through sad alleys, eradicating mystery Enough to make a person dissolve.

And say, "I am coming to America."

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