Thunder Sandwich #23

Tennessee, Tennessee

It was the lights of Memphis

that drove the nails through your hands,

and anywhere beneath your roof

was no place to be.

Mississippi below the fold in your map,

Georgia shacked up with Alabama

across a dark ridge

of evergreens.

Tennessee, Tennessee,

swimming the dark horse river

down the circle-sawed moon,

cheering a brick through

the prison of your heart

yet, you knew somehow,

despite the screws of conversation,

stilled in the liquor of landscape,

that it's all really just a willful sleeplessness,

nothing more.