Afternoon burns everything off Franklin Street.
Even the birds, even the flies.
Or iced-tea sugar and chicken grease weigh everyone
into a doze, all indoors, in a cool
they said would never come eighty years ago
when this was still the center of business
and the civilized left these high hours to the dogs,
ice in a highball, and let each house
When they come
filling the yard with their overheard,
broke-glass catastrophes of voice,
overcrowded party line,
he lets the screen door clap
to see them plume
the settle back to the fence,
aftershocks of crowd and wail.
When they come
he says again he was home at breakfast
radio preacher doing love thy neighbor
and then the bomb,
just ask the wife.
The silence
in the TV's cathode glow
slowly fills with questions
as starlings shutter light
then weigh the lines, voices
