For those, like me, who enjoy looking into the seemingly insignificant, who ask why and how come, who pause more often on the tiny spaces between small things, this poem is for you.
And This Just In
David Tucker
Those footfalls on the stairs when the night shift went home,
the sunlight fanning through the dinosaur’s rib cage,
the janitor’s sneeze—we’re asking questions,
we’d like to know more.
The moth in the clock tower at City Hall,
the 200th generation to sleep there, we may banner the story
across page one. And in Metro, we’re leading
with the yawn that traveled city council chambers
this morning then slipped into the streets
and wound through the city. The editorial page
will decry the unaccountable boredom
that overtook everyone around three in the afternoon.
In Features we catch up with the young priest
as he climbs the long steps to his church,
his arms full of groceries.
A watchman humming in the parking lot
at Broad and Market—we have that story—
with a sidebar on the bronze glass
of a whiskey bottle cracking into cheap jewels
under his boots. A boy walking across the ball field
an hour after the game—we’re covering that silence.
We have reporters working hard, we’re getting
to the bottom of all of it.
from The Missouri Review
Volume XXIV, Number 1, 2001
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