Three hours of Plato and you
can bet your bottom dollar I
found a way to Zappa before we
got to the end of the second book.

Mind wide open, missed the bus at Wacker
and ended up in Sweetwater
asking why in God’s name Shiner
Bock is listed with stouts and porters.

Didn’t miss it exactly — driver
just didn’t want to risk
letting the little bit of cold
traveling with me on board. So

he pulled away without opening the door.
I tell the waitress I’m a native Texan
and I know shinerbock is no…

she says I know I know I’m from New Mexico.

Thinking neutral territory, I pass over
everything from Antwerp to Kalamazoo
and settle on a Colorado milk stout —

come to find out when she comes back and I say I
forgot to ask the most important question
that she is from Alamogordo.

I talk White Sands, Mescalero, tell her I grew up on
the edge in Oldham County and lived in Santa Fe.
Turns out she got married there and doesn’t
have anything against Texans. She says

I see you’re a writer, and conversation
waltzes across Texas to Amarillo, then on
through Sweetwater south to Austin. Weird

how mind goes. I sat down to think
flowers in crannied walls, universes
in grains of sand, flocks of pigeons rising
to see Shanghai whole, cranes leaving
lonely towers empty when they fly

and stumbled on Amarillo cold Chicago
streets so much closer to home because
the driver kept the door closed and I stopped
for a beer while I chose not to kill time stuttering

with me waiting for a train.