Bestiary
Moon Over Tow Truck
These Days
1931
creeping dusk
peepers
little cowboys
roping
out their songs
Godzilla
dancing
in the mist
of Tokyo
and under
TV cables
crickets
blackly chanting
Creatures, hear us
we belong
ask the Viking tides,
ask your
Chevy Nova,
wherever it is,
or the ghost
of Van Gogh,
master
of the electro-
magnetic style,
ask any
apple falling
in the blue
and shining
dusk,
all is pull
a stripped VW Beetle
in Lakota grasses is
a buffalo at rest,
or from a distant ridge,
a prehistoric turtle
from the last sea.
After a photo by William Gedney
in town
the men
were lean,
sidewalk
ripples,
those
overcoats
they wore,
prows
Mark Jackley’s latest book of poems, On the Edge of a Very Small Town, is available by emailing chineseplums@gmail.com. His work has appeared in Fifth Wednesday, Sugar House Review, Talking River, and other journals. He lives in Purcellville, Virginia.
