I’m turned around
like a July winter in Rio
or an upside down tomato
plant that still
grows, hungover—
too much to drink
last night around a bon-
fire here in where
am I—Vermont—oh
vacay with Jeannette’s fam-
ily at the cottage
on Lake Champlain. Glug
glug glug cocktail hour
at 5 o’clock firm
hold on a martini or three.
Seagull seagull a merganser
a fleeting thought. Someone
just tipped over in their body-
sailboat-thing. Rich people.
Jeannette comes by, hovers
and asks what I’m doing—
nothing, reading
Ben Lerner’s novel then
Mary Ruefle then Schuyler
who gave me this poem
which writes itself. A dream
of a week it’s been pretending
to be rich, Jeannette—
then she flies on with her hair
done up in a blond halo
braid (milk maids, they call it)
tip-toeing on the rocky
beach in a sleek black one-piece.
Boredom comes just before
a moment of awe, a yawn
taking in New England
air to bring home. Chicago
tomorrow—clouds break
into a breakthrough, the calm
before the evening storm.
It’s a windsurf board, Jeannette says.
SOMETHING STUCK IN MY EYE
The sun has been staring
at me all day long
standing by the window
through which everyone’s breezes
go
in one ear out the other.
On the radio they are talking about “ambient intimacy”
and the so-called Social Media Expert Leisa Reichelt says
“This isn’t so much
about meaning
but about being
in touch.”
I don’t know why
but today feels
like December 14, 2012.
I was standing on the train platform
and finally noticed all the people in
the world thinking about Sandy Hook
with hurt feelings among other things
but then the holiday train came and everyone
looked alive.
Whether snow or cottonwood fluff
there are specks
of white anything
all over everything
up in the air.
It is not December.
I am not on a train platform.
It is more like Christmas in July.
Tyler Cain Lacy lives in Chicago, where he got an MFA at Columbia College. He is the author of REUS (Press Board Press, 2014), and is a 2014 Luminarts Creative Writing Fellow. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bombay Gin, Word for/ Word, Banango Street, and Stolen Island, among others. Find more here.