minnesota was a broken jaw
you dragged me through, saying
see how the word never reaches us

but the bass that caught your clasp
and drowned in air seemed
eloquent as any

that night my navel became an easel,
became its own front yard

and the harbor made of eggs, and all
crates flung with ivy

if we stopped in larsmont on the way to lutsen
i was drowsy so you brushed back your hair

it was the way the road flared and was a string
of broken bottles, roadside stands for corn husks,
the shine from bleach-blank mile markers

it was about a man coming down the stairs
and then driving up the coast it was about
not being the coast