By Andrew Vogel
Ohio shimmers its sargasso miles
as if all the world were beaming.
We chant anthems into wake sprawl.
Our lyrics pollinate foam-yellow fields.
The big Midwest has no center—
merciful vultures observe it whole,
twisted retreads and all the wrack
washing up in the road-side gravel.
A opossum, rolled last night under
the wave-break of a speeding car,
crawled past the ebb-line to tender
its bones and joeys to the seasons.
Andrew Vogel listens, walks the hills, and teaches in rural eastern Pennsylvania, the homelands of the displaced Lenape peoples. His poems have appeared most recently in Poetry East, Hunger Mountain, Crab Creek Review, The Briar Cliff Review.