Chad Davidson


Dear Arrowhead water, dear feather boa, dear father

and mother with the toddler and cartful of candles:


I wanted to tell you the sky swished open its doors

this morning, the whole shebang slid by on felt,


and I entered the mythic fires of stoicism,

bore my nakedness in the manner of Shackleton,


defiantly ignorant. For I know that Target, centerless

like new pedagogies, loves the good good,


loves punishment somehow fulfilling

a niche audience. That’s me. I love to finger


the Milano-style whatnot, bend the necks

of five-headed floor lamps. Yes, I love you dearly,


dear church of the cherished storage bin,

dear Cheerios and the bowl to drown you in,


dear sky, dear reindeer aiming the plastic beads

of your eyes at my impulse buys. Once, I shot a gun


in the desert, laid it down in the sand and said

a small prayer to prayers of small sizes.


Years later, we navigated the marked-downs

and Doritos safe in their mylar pillows,


thought we’d stripped ourselves clean

of desire’s burrs and foxtails, even as popcorn


promised low-sodium transubstantiation.

We were registering, the word itself green and bearded,


so aimed our fantastic machines at the crock

pot and bath rug, at the iPod snug in its skin.


We dressed ourselves in the warmth of a small space

heater, fed the nuisance of class consciousness


little biscuits. How cloudless, how terrible and lucid

the distances we traveled for our dear wedding guests—


dear, which my Italian friend uses in that British way,

as in, That pair of pants is too dear. And how dear, how shear


the night, we thought, dearly beloved, outside the Target,

the headlights of all those cars trained on us.