The planes: the shortest distance between corn

Repetition is a common prayer dangerous to a driver
boxed in, under an open sky, a rectangular prison
as rain arches across the planes.

Did you know the shortest distance between corn
are straight lines though its poles’ and electrical power lines,
an overturned microchip, the ticks on a rail
road of boxes and cylinders city-bound
around square miles of deserted farmland.

In Philadelphia

“I don’t want to be a freakish fowl,” he said,
on the last day of the last trip of the city,
down from the Met where the Gucci sign is,

“You’re a 700mi a day bird,” I said,
looking over the last barb of the last feather of the coat;
his talons band-less, his eyes empty–orphaned no less,
the city is full of the homeless homing–

and there I was,
begging strangers:
the Asian couples, the Ohioan families of five–temporally of Times Square,
trying to raise the 125 dollars for the 125th convention,
for Thad, my gray speckled 30-ft pigeon,

for in Philadelphia, my bird would compete,
for in Philadelphia, my friend would win,
for in Philadelphia, my brother, would go free.