NEW! Poem by Alexandria Peary

Alexandria Peary


TITLE WITH SHADOW


“ ” are put around a tree which is plaid but smells fruity

and then the white field slides to the right of the poem

in the awkward jump my Royal typewriter makes for a huge tab

to jut from the side as they walk to find the manager

while the whole 1/2 mile is reeled back in

though the walk back is pleasant, like chewing gum

or chewing on color. In Ugg boots, they traipse around

stepping over white shapes in the white, looking up from watching their feet

to discuss the title up at top which doesn’t help,

a group of charcoal letters with a steel shadow

ineffectual as a billboard in the middle of nowhere

(perhaps nowhere grew around it). Some people

may be discomforted by walking in a forest inside white

and not knowing which season it is, so an icon of a yellow leaf

falls. They walk by the trees they passed up—

the blaze orange one, “Garage Band,” smelling of Johnny Walker,

the one covered in American flags, others smelling like “grandma’s kitchen,”

“clean air,” and the tree that’s an open window which they almost took,

that row moving jerkily as though on a conveyor belt.

They reach the manager who grumbles about people ripping trees off

in middle of the night, he wants to install a surveillance camera

so sensitive it will respond to the wedge of moon and the most poetic moves of leaves

and, indeed, they had seen on their way down how instead

of stumps, there were little gashes in the cardboard

where the staples had been. Everyone needs a title,

for finished books and ones written only for the shelf in oneself.

A title is good for any car. It will make the ride smell better.

Quotation marks around a leaf make it ring like a bell

like this one outside the manager’s lean-to. Tired by now, they look back

in the middle of the lane, not having a thought,

The title with shadow— coneless original—

In the white lane, A figure made of sea glass,

Kelp moving in the shadow.