Peter Berghoef

Factory Town

The dirty river flows heavy here, she said, so go away, and her fingertips bled
onto my cleanest shirt and pants.

While the breath went fast to a wind’s pace over some frozen, treeless land
she whispered words I couldn’t hear: sighing and crying before taking the tax
collector in her mouth.

This title will eventually refer to time

Recovering from the thought that this year could be so long,
that a decade could be done
with five more years to go.
And what else is so organized as time already gone?

Vertical miles of forest cover my shoulders;
these wrists are sand dunes spilling under careless feet.

Less than fortunes of unspent minutes
collapsing as time itself is captured,

frozen like meat
fresh-killed and delivered to my door.

No thought encapsulates the mouth—
the moving month ripped stillborn
from an aging womb.

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