Tuscaloosa Train Station Pamphlets

Call me Sal. As in salient, salacious, salivate, salt.
Every sentience has a period, destinies
that shine with pale blue veinlets
in the ibis-like sodium shunts of her eyelids.
Between the round spaces in her bones
there is a blue and green and white marble of the eye
such as astronauts defile with their exclamations
and scientific instrumentation. Latin is forever near me.
This town was named after a warrior
redemption's violent tedium killed into dust.
There is a part of my eye that glows gold inside
when the sun hits it, revealing solid light.
The river, aged brown crayon in the sun, details
what the dead know. I spend my time here,
drinking Cokes and caring.
There is a dry stink, and barely any wickedness.
The whores move to Atlanta, or North.
Sal is not a name to get you far here.
Her leg against the tapestry of a ball and claw
chair is the journey between green Neptune and cold
pill Pluto, from whose bourne no traveller returns,
and the belief in undiscovered bodies.
The underworld planet in the books
is the most beautiful space
of home, the absolute zero true adventure
of moons that become their own worlds
invisible to the naked eye. The station depends
on arrivals. Those who leave read first in the lavoratory.
I could not bear to witness mere jewelry touching her ears.
For her only would I gladly blacken my eye
and replace any number of yellowing teeth.
Everyone I talk to regrets his sea-dreams.
The pickle relish warms up my hot dog.
On my shoulder I carry a glazed white angel
with scarlet toenail polish for a mouth.
Unless it comes before hers,
nothing will be truer than the time
spent waiting for my arrival.

*Theodore Worozbyt has received grants from the NEA, and the Georgia and Alabama Councils for the Arts. His poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Alice Blue, 42opus, American Poetry Journal, The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel, Crazyhorse, Faultline, Hotel Amerika, Image, kaleidowhirl, Kulture Vulture, Mississippi Review Online, New England Review, National Poetry Review, North American Review, Passages North, The Southern Review and Verse Daily. His first full-length collection, The Dauber Wings, won the first American Poetry Review Book Prize and will be published in 2007. His chapbook, A Unified Theory of Light, is available on Amazon.com.