walleye town
I suppose it’s white, really, white and gray and dry and stiff as a board
And boring, light bouncing off the snow and boring
into your eyes - which are mostly white, aren’t they?
The sun is pale and the sky is pale and the skin is pale,
the houses and the opinions and the roads,
And the stolen sugar in the white-gray grocery store.
And the people here, they are fish-eyed and sweet and maybe they are hollow,
But you cannot see the depths of their insides when there are no shadows
That fall on their white-gray tongues - cannot see if there is liquid in their veins
When they look no different from a stone or a bone,
Or the blackened underside of the overpass.