Rogers Plaza Etude
Behold, the secondhand embarrassment
of the palace that can’t retain its tenants,
the holes in the arrangement, marked for lease,
where once an OfficeMax or Kroger might
preside above the commons. I’m afraid
you’ve come too late for anything except
overstock: a malfunctioning TV, or
the jersey of a bum the Tigers traded
years behind. The letters on the storefront
windows stand for something, only
now it’s somewhere else, in the file cabinet
of a distant headquarters, a decade
in the century before this one. Still,
despite the empty space, there are reasons
to come here, a Post Office branch sometimes
drawing crowds on Saturday, the salon
whose drywall has been, again, repainted
as if to assure you these aisles are not
forbidden. If I can make you need me
first, then maybe one day you could learn
to love the way the morning sun blasts through
the panels in my ceiling, and the scent
of popcorn radiates from the vendor’s
final stand. Not everything is so absent
as the playset resembling breakfast food
the kids once tumbled from. I was carried
to this place in pieces, and will leave it
just the same, incapable of simple
services or transactions: come dancing,
The Kinks plead before the gated entrance,
come in from the rain, I want to tell you,
sticker across my lock signaling welcome.
Autotopia
(Grand Rapids, MI)
these streets are narrow enough the cars don’t get broken into
arranged in columns like record jackets worn away by use or want
Autotopia I segue slowly into traffic wondering to myself
what tenderness is left for us among the overpasses chipped at
by another decade’s rain the streetlights’ distorted reflections
in puddle and glass we are travelers of the tenuous hurtling
feet-first into tributaries of sound my son eating his breakfast
in a car seat en route and me as I ferry him through signage
toward the learning center stray traces of tomorrow spilling
into space around us a phone call too early to be anything
but a billing reminder the picnic tables in the park deleted
their graffiti the hands that built them I am lacking language
to package up the local barrage the heated council meetings
corporate acquisition of an historic paper the words I speak
misshapen by what I’ve meant them to contain wisp of dandelion
exclusion zone it’s the scope of what I’m not equipped to notice
that scares me most the content machine radiating forth
an alchemy of symbolism and shock I walk my son into class
kiss his forehead a moment to emerge from the emergency
embodied before I am again preoccupied by messages
my deluge of receipts I am already counting to discern
if I can hold out through summer knowing every stop I make
along the midway of the city will cost me is it our turn yet
for rumors of war the feedback loop the shooter loose on campus
is it our turn to lose the hour of decision among dishes
laundry baskets the price of eggs inflection point diminished
by dialogue broken off Autotopia I am suspended here
on the threshold drawing strength from him my child
who so often without knowing has led me station to station
through the fun house this maze of faces my every possible self
converging interlude by interlude I will wear his laughter
his belief like a suit of armor as I ascend back into road noise
this carousel of murmur a wind you push across your reeds
Andrew Collard is the author of Sprawl (Ohio University Press, 2023) and winner of the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, AGNI, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. He lives with his son in Grand Rapids, MI, where he teaches writing at Grand Valley State University.