In certain weather radios pick up weak signals. Conversations you’re not having.
Apologies. At sundown the rooms display their contents: viewboxes hung in the flattened
black. All depth parceled, private. And something always getting into the garbage.
What is it keeps getting into the garbage? Furry chunk of darkness, escaping on quiet feet.
(text: Martin Seay, image: 6” x 6”, etching, 2006)

       Between the smokestacks, the green monologue river. Steep banks. Interrupting
its way to the city. That’s right: the city. A nest of hostages, drained out like a tub.
Count the rings.
(text: Martin Seay, image: 6” x 6”, etching, 2006)

       There: a cloud blooms on the outskirts of town. Vertical in the still air. An
upraised finger. A banner of lace. You can’t see its shadow because you’re in its shadow.
       It’s towering now. It comes to this. Watch it closely. White smoke means it’s a
brush fire. Black smoke means it’s a house.
(text: Martin Seay, image: 6” x 6”, etching, 2006)

       There, below the mud, the fallout shelter. Brick cocoon. It exhales on cool
evenings, air thick with safety. The tornado siren long gone soft, senile. Singing old
songs in a small voice.
(text: Martin Seay, image: 6” x 6”, etching, 2006)

       Better not to ask after history. We had our reasons, and they took root here like
fistfuls of seed.
       Gray hills nude behind trees. Not farming country.The light, sidelong, keeps
secrets. I couldn’t draw you a map to it. A lot had already happened by the time we
arrived.
(text: Martin Seay, image: 6” x 6”, etching, 2006)

       They say the old place has changed. Go ahead, say it: the old place has changed.
       By day we stick to the usual streets. Traffic lights roll over, explaining the
patterns. Quaint cobblestones stub toes. That damn dog won’t stop barking, barking at
nothing, at nothing. That big Colonial down the street finally sold. That truck always
beeps when it backs up. We are located. We have time.
(text: Martin Seay, image: 6” x 6”, etching, 2006)

       In certain weather radios pick up weak signals. Conversations you’re not having.
Apologies. At sundown the rooms display their contents: viewboxes hung in the flattened
black. All depth parceled, private. And something always getting into the garbage.
What is it keeps getting into the garbage? Furry chunk of darkness, escaping on quiet feet.
(text: Martin Seay, image: 6” x 6”, etching, 2006)