A glass falls and fills the clouds with shards,
a broken window with that old blue and green marble
on the other side, magnified so we almost think
we can go back. A kitten mewing in a woodpile.
A child lost on the street. A mother, panicked
at the police station, her lucky penny tossed
down the wrong well. We can’t do anything
but watch and maybe, finally, get to know
our neighbors. The world was Eden after all,
but after dark, before fire. We never could see
the great Godzilla, but something smelled awful
and our friends kept getting stepped on.
Over a drink, we remember cold nights that froze
our beards. Over another, we recall how sharing
a cigarette was the closest we got most nights to sharing
each other’s breath. The silliness of believing
that sleep and wakefulness were different states.
That I love you and fuck off were antonyms.
Our talk flows like the mighty Mississippi.
Alive, we could never find the right words,
blind dates who said they’d come right back but didn’t.
The barmaid’s an angel, and the low yowl of Mozart
and Mingus’s latest jam rises from the juke box
like a body from a tomb. Alive, I was a radio
that lost reception, I say. There were miracles
everywhere, I say, on earth as it is in heaven,
but my eyes were union workers on their lunch break.
These hot wings are miracles, but everything’s a miracle.
You say, let me tell you something in confidence.
Your voice climbs onto some ledge
that my ears can’t walk you off of.
You say I can’t handle all these miracles.
You drink until you fall down because
it’s way too much for you to stand.

–Tom C. Hunley,
Scotch Tape World
Accents Publishing

More from Scotch Tape World and Tom C. Hunley:

• “Another Dream of Falling”
• “Um”
• Tom C. Hunley’s “Most Important Thing”
• “Having Banished the Musicians” from Bigger than They Appear
• Accents Poets Nominated for the Pushcart

Tom C. Hunley is an associate professor of English at Western Kentucky University and the director of Steel Toe Books. Among his previous books are The Poetry Gymnasium (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2012); Annoyed Grunt (Imaginary Friend Press, 2012); Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2010, Gold Invitational Series); Octopus (Logan House, 2008, Winner of the Holland Prize); Teaching Poetry Writing: A Five-Canon Approach (Multilingual Matters LTD., 2007, New Writing Viewpoints Series); My Life as a Minor Character (Pecan Grove, 2005, winner of a national chapbook contest); Still, There’s a Glimmer (WordTech Editions, 2004); and The Tongue (Wind Publications, 2004). He divides his time between Kansas and Oz.