Deer City

For a while in there
diplodocus roamed the earth

This is whatever the opposite
of an invasive thought is

Deer on impossibly slender
feet move through the city

at night and I am tired of paying
the moon’s power bill

as I am tired of not making small talk
these gas station exchanges

and using my inside voice
a rock on a floor surrounded by glass

Deer pluck the vegetation from my city
indifferent to boundary lines

Midnight games of basketball ploink
the tempo for coyote songs

There’s nothing else to do Walmart
and the bars all close early

every street preacher’s sign now reads
Told You So in big meticulous block font

like the flat wide faces of libraries
erected in the seventies

so I’ve made a game to pass time
I hide my coughs in a hole

in the mayor’s backyard
Whoever finds them wins

his daughter’s hand
the jar it’s preserved in