Sculpture Garden

Brick Professional Building
enislanded by offramps.

Asphalt Curbs Pushed onto the Mulch
by the plow service
spell something broken
in the lot of the brick professional building.

Black Plastic Rat Traps
every twenty paces 
under dead brown junipers
ring the brick professional building.

Box for Patient Samples
bolted to the masonry
outside the back basement door
of the brick professional building.

Five People in Cars Eating by Phonelight
two of them wearing scrubs
each of them alone
behind the brick professional building.

Oft-Gnawed Fisher Price People
collect pathogens
in the children’s corner
of the brick professional building. 

* 
Inholding

Where feral bloodroot blooms
prettily, where knotweed and bittersweet
are bad ideas that have won the meadow
where there are wells and springs
and cairns and cellars
there is a heavy chain and hook
hanging from a maple too old to tap
where her late husband
butchered their cow.

Corwin Ericson is the author of Swell, a novel, and the collection
Checked Out OK. His work has appeared in Volt, Jubilat,
Harpers, and elsewhere.

(Image: Ralph Eugene Meatyard. “Untitled,” 1963. Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery)