Daydreams Are for Counting
The bottleshop at the threshold of town
squats like a teal-painted barn
for if the town was just a prairie,
and at that barn would sit a little lamb
on one of the parking stumps,
in front of which a car would normally face
and be relieved that, now, it can look nowhere.
The lamb sits with the mufflers still hot
and spectates the fuel stations just to the left
and the tiny daisies
salvaged as a favor by the crawling spring.
The uncomfortable summer wind crayons her fleece
with a rush and then a slow morale.
At the bottleshop barn, nothing is made secret.
The snarky, bubble-retro hang signs
that can take up the width of a door
with just a word.
Beer. Lottery. Soda. Smokes.
because, as everyone knows,
the best service is being able to tell something
like you know it for sure.
Little Lamb tips the cream soda can
towards her cupid’s bow and
picks up the pink kitchen grease
long melting on her upper lip.
Her tired eyes and the sun.
Little Lamb would be allowed to daydream.
On the dusty freeway ride last week,
she sat with the air in the vehicle dry
with a blank dreariness.
Out the mud-spotted window,
she catches a glimpse of a burial site,
sprinkled with yellow and pink petals
like fallen letters.
Next to it, a seasonal berry stand.
She comes home on some days and washes her face
with just the warm tap and waits for the scrubby
redness on her cheekbones to subside.
Little Lamb walked in yesterday to the bagel shop
that, no matter when, is always busy
being filled with goth white people
wearing authentically-faded tees and
septum piercings clogged with nameless fingerprints.
The nice blonde girl probably with a name
like Sugar or Candy with the nippling tie-dye tank
and just the stoned guy named John.
The pre-job and post-job bustle
off-shelving the sandwiches called something cute like
The Tahoe or The Yuba or The Yosemite
with the pungent sprouts.
The bagel shop that sells the bubble tea
made of colored dust from a pouch,
and amidst all this Little Lamb would think
Maybe I will fly further.
Maybe she will fly further into this
compaction of idiosyncrasies
and, like everyone, be a drifter.
Little Lamb after a shift will palm,
kindly with an ask, a fortune cookie
packed with, not one, but three fortunes
that a machine error pinched in a clump,
leaving even the blank
paper strips with more wordless ridges.
Little Lamb with Sam Phillip’s How To Dream
in her ear like how it sounds in Gilmore Girls.
From her bed, she can see the black tapestry
of mellow-night trees with the tops like a lacy fringe,
like it was meant for a face.
Across the cool window is a faraway house
with a baby lamp still out on its porch.
Little Lamb some mornings would want to lay
with her back on the green
in a type of nirvanic calm that she tells everyone
the jade bangle on her wrist makes possible
when it really is just painted glass.
She would nest her head in the grass until,
if she waited enough years,
the daisies lined the pockets of her jeans and
crept up her sleeves and pant legs until
the daisies are the only things still clinging.
Die in this sunshine.
On signal, she would board the night train.
She elbows her lap,
cream soda can to chest,
her sight in line with the underbelly of the passing,
pollen-streaked trucks.
On the side of the road in front of the bottleshop barn,
Little Lamb recalls what it is like to see movement
from a view of one not moving
but feeling real.