Ryan Clark
A line boundary is a stern boundary. Unearth it.
You could see successive lines and surfaces
marking it, dirty map-lashed notation
of large enamel laces licked off our teeth.
This is true location, a fitting of braces
keeping shape under the rust of prairie;
a line notating stillness where there is none.
A gauge of the where of the Plains―the west edge
of us as lineated here―is long and covered,
the branded face we see drawn in corrections.
You see the wind in dirt carried over sound,
in the shuffling eyes-shut way you walk
through it. I need the trust of home in a line
I touch when I feel for a fitted western border,
so I talk in very precise measurements
and place cement markers every two-thirds
of a mile for one hundred thirty-four miles
underneath whatever state or county
to roughly reflect what the 100th Meridian is—
a solvent that lingered as a form
to explain what is redrawn over us.