Some blunt hammering set me off,
that and the teeth of a saw.
I left behind my sweater,
the remains of a sandwich, my camera,
some paperweights, my lament. I left behind
a few weak coals I’d blown alive.
This happened somewhere
off one of your forgotten roads,
just past a farm stand where customers leave
a little corrugated shed
with the smell of rotting corn-silk in their clothes.
The important fs are focus, flatness, and frame.
As I walked toward a harvest
of photographs you vanished
in the pinhole just beyond
my reach, like an owl in its darkest seat.

Listen to David Roderick’s reading of “Dear Suburb,” below…

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