Read A Pretty Sight for Free Online Page A

court, sprout roots
    in lobbies and rooftop gravel.
    School floorboards
    warp and rake. The pool
    fills with ceiling tiles
    and flaking paint.
    •
     
    There are many of us here. A whole street.
    They went off just as they were, in their shirt sleeves.
    Around it, burdock, stinging-nettle, and goose-foot.
    I’m not supposed to be talking about this.
    Everywhere we used shovels.
    Get rid of the topsoil to the depth of one spade.
    Changing our masks up to thirty times a shift.
    I would see roes and wild boars. They were thin and sleepy,
    like they were moving in slow motion.
    Something glistened.
    It came off in layers – as white film … the colour of his face.
    There it was – and there it wasn’t.
    Safer than samovars.
    What we saw.
    The wind blows the dust from one field to the next.
    Dresses, boots, chairs, harmonicas, sewing machines. We buried it
    in ditches. Houses and trees, we buried everything.
    There lie thousands of dogs, cats, horses, that were shot. And not
    a single name. What remains of ancient Greece?
    The myths of ancient Greece.
    On the one hand, it’s disgusting, and on the other hand – why don’t you
    all go fuck yourselves?
    We heard that something had happened somewhere.
    So you can picture it: a lead vest, masks, the wheelbarrows
    and insane speed.
    The ants are crawling along the tree branch.
    ‘In several generations’
    ‘Forever’
    ‘Nothing’
    They brought me the urn. I felt around with my hand,
    and there was something tiny, like seashells in the sand,
    those were his hip bones.
    Everyone became what he really was.
    ‘Walking ashes.’
    When I got here, the birds were in their nests, and when I left
    the apples were lying in the snow.
    That was the worst. All around, it was just beautiful.
    I would never see such people again. Everyone’s faces
    just looked crazy. Their faces did, and so did ours.
    We buried the forest.
    We buried the earth.
    We sawed the trees into meter-and-a-half pieces
    and packed them in cellophane and threw them into graves.
    They stood in the black dust, talking, breathing, wondering at it.
    You can imagine how much philosophy there was.
    I felt like I was recording the future.
    We’re its victims, but also its priests.
    When I die, sell the car and the spare tire, and don’t marry Tolik.
    You should come into this world on your tiptoes, and stop at the entrance.
    This person will be happy just to find one human footprint.
    •
     
    There’s a fecund smell,
    grenadine sweet,
    remnants of mutant hemlock,
    chestnut and wildflowers,
    or it could be
    cotton candy.
    The Fun Fair rusts.
    Stark as a double helix
    of DNA , unused scaffolds
    of the Tilt-A-Whirl
    lean and shriek
    in the refrigerated calm.
    •
     
    I don’t know what I should talk about –
    A ruined building, a field of debris;
    I’ll remember everything for you.

Sing Song
    One day all those kittens and pups
    we drowned in a sack
    will come crawling back.
    They’ll drag up shit
    from L.A. to the Moscow underground.
    They’ll claw through our exhaust,
    oil and grease
    that’s decanted into sewer grates
    by generations of squeegee kids.
    Their scratches will resound
    like some turntablist’s retro stack
    that
doo-langs
    as it’s tipped from a milk crate.
    They won’t be fucking around.
    They’ll hunt us down.
    They’ll get a fix and calibrate
    like the Hubble’s squint staring in,
    one eye a plaster cast
    from Pompeii, the other in decay
    like Chernobyl.
    They’ll raise a din,
    their yips like drone strikes, their howls
    a martyr’s mother on CNN ,
    their meows the opinionated crap
    we generated in chatrooms
    so easily after the fact. Just you wait.
    They’re no Mutt and Jeff.
    On their tags there’s WTO and IMF
    engraved in gold. And when we’re found
    on the business end of their GPS ,
    they’ll say, ‘Did you really think
    you’d give our sins the slip
    by filling up some burlap
    and tipping us in the drink?’
    They’re coming around, crammed
    up the yingyang
    with talking