Plastic Bag from Corner Store Laments the Self

When they finally find me

                        all sprawled in the limbs of this tall oak

who can’t look me in the eyes anymore,

                        I’ll ask that simple question of myself,

where I might be taken, or take myself,

                        when the power lines quit humming their work songs

to the fading red & black & blue

                        graffiti lining the underpass

where I spent my youth grazing,

                        or when the moon turns blood-red & maudlin

& coughs me back up

                        on the mangled Chesapeake shores.

And when they ask why I’m there, I’ll slouch my shoulders.

                        And when they ask where I’m going I’ll quote the sky again.

I learned at birth to smile

                        where my teeth are not. And I learned after:

everything that opens is a mouth.

                        Every mouth will spit you right out.