Post-industrial / Timothy Dodd

these crumbling buildings lose

                                   their language;

so, too, our lives in the whip

                                   of vehicle mob

buzzing by as if to a utopian

                                   space colony,

our great chase to indebtedness

                                    empty vessels:

we tie on the more practical shoe,

                                    limping for logo,

the supernal lost in us, measuring

                                    distance instead

with plans of driving the gap to zero

                                    all in one tongue;

we’ve stopped looking at the craft

                                    of old buildings:

cut them straight now, grind

                                    without noticing

how they once bent windy days

                                    like wildflowers.

Post-industrial first appeared in Washington Square Review

Timothy Dodd is from Mink Shoals, WV. He is the author of short story collections Fissures, and Other Stories (Bottom Dog Press), Men in Midnight Bloom (Cowboy Jamboree Press), and Mortality Birds (Southernmost Books, with Steve Lambert), as well as poetry collections Modern Ancient (High Window Press) and Vital Decay (Cajun Mutt Press). Tim is also a visual artist who primarily exhibits in the Philippines. Sample artwork can be found on Instagram @timothybdoddartwork. His website is timothybdodd.wordpress.com.