from The Americans

from The Americans

after Robert Frank

(Motorama—Los Angeles)

it’s never jazz
playing as you
cross Anaconda
to Blackfoot but
a Denver talk show
host, “That boy is
red, I tell you”    green
constellations    light
seeps in from the
past

            yellowing

alive and awake
outside Omaha; it’s
2 A.M.

(Candy store—New York City)

music oranged    she
is talking    he hears
it    now song then
colors    some great
Chrysler disembodied
and floating    like some
medieval ceremony    an
ochred New York
cocktail party    cigars
blueing air    the music
blacks and thickens

(Mississippi River, Baton Rouge, Louisiana)

(how light works along water

against crosses, grasses, water and
asphalt things tabbed plastic blooms
jukebox eye among small sticks left by
mourners the Jesus hooked mercilessly
to its terrain

(U.S. 91, leaving Blackfoot, Idaho)

The most dangerous thing to do is to stand still.

A man in a black t-shirt drives a green pick-up.

The radio quit somewhere north of Rexburg.

Yesterday was a day of mirrors.

He’s been driving all night.

Even in the headlights, the colors fail.