Diane Seuss

 

Mountains black today, hiding when the wind cooperates

Mountains black today, hiding when the wind cooperates behind Whitman
beards, legless homeless talking to themselves on red dirt corners, laughing 
at the nothing there is to laugh at, holding up blank cardboard signs, 
the want so great they can’t put words to it, and I belong nowhere, have 
never belonged anywhere, not where I was raised, not where I was not raised, 
not in any classroom or strip motel or restaurant of any false or real ethnicity, 
not chic, not invisible, not urban but no farm where my apron can flap 
in the wind, not in any workplace, my god, workplaces, I know this is 
the wail of a teenager and yet I’m not really wailing, am I, am I wailing, 
I’m saying this body has never been a home, my shack a shackle, dog 
is a good boy but he bites, poems are someone else’s clothes I slipped 
into so I could skip town, even the hospital where I was born was borrowed 
from the Catholics, nuns thought I was odd and tried to foist me off 
on the Buddhists but they reached through the fog and handed me back