Imagine a dry place where they drop off flowers. Brown and dry. A Church’s chicken across the street, a rusted smokestack poking out behind it. Someone standing in the grey avenue, waiting for a blue car to pass so he can see if the bus is coming. A lady with a shopping cart staring South to make sure what she’s seeing is a red UFO and not the Penobscot ball glowing every five seconds on top of the city like a looking glass.
The seagulls don’t agree to anything. It just gets built. I get coffee and tomato pie, remember back home and the red brick train station and the abandoned taco place and the frowns. I call them cousins. One cousin built steering gear and one cousin built bodies and one built tires. Somewhere there is a cousin building a life with his children and all of a sudden the power gets turned off.
Then the power gets turned on again. Things go around in circles like falcons lost in the city. Cars keep going, and the orange cones keep going up. Some orange cones go up in places you never thought they would. Someone says they’re gonna put a train in here.
Someone puts a train in there. They are putting the tracks for a train down there. They are digging a giant hole in the middle of the city. They puff up dust and drive tractors and trucks and dig a huge hole. The kids across the street are having a parade with their marching band. In the huge hole they are also digging other holes and buildings are sprouting up from them. There is a yellow sun and dust going up. They are going to fill it with red and white ice and play hockey it it.