POEM
You Can't Buy Shoes in a Painting
Jill OsierYou can't even buy a soda. You can only
see these things, see a mother steer
her son to the car, his head cocked
licking his ice cream.
Earlier, driving, trying to keep
between two cornfields, I couldn't see myself
into a map, couldn't be anywhere in it,
though I knew all the patient states
between us.
Pigeons sit high on a mill's peaked roof,
spaced even as beads. They can stand that
close to each other, but looking at them
you wouldn't know it. Would you.
Source: Poetry (June 2005).
This poem originally appeared in the June 2005 issue of Poetry.
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Jill Osier is from northeast Iowa, lives in Fairbanks, Alaska, and is currently the Diane . . . MORE »
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