Jimmy Lo

ON MOVING OUT

At the plant,
my mother pinches it up
like a tiny insect
and melts its silver needle legs
onto a circuit board.
She likes the way it stands,
angled slightly forward,
its feet stuck too deep
in the mire to walk away.
Some are like statues,
empty warehouses at night,
or dumpsters in parking lots
where the acid smell
of silicon burns over the grid.
She tells me capacitors
rise like water towers, and
electricity releases like a flood,
always spilling on
the kitchen floor, dripping from
a leaky roof, or tipping over
the edges of cups.
She spends all her life
mopping it up, pushing it
around, keeping it
in basins to wash my feet.
Still, it rushes clockwise down
drains, down gutters, always
away.

Date of Birth: October 30, 1977 Location: Atlanta, Georgia Email: unreal@angband.org Publications: North Avenue Review

Naming what it comes to / october The Porch the difference between tea Hand in Hand The Blown Fuse Death Poem Moth While Reading Your Poems A Cat's Lives Day of Reckoning my cousin jesse lee On Moving Out Math in Leon County Turning Sixty Five in Montana Knowing Fire On the Occasion of My Cat's First Birthday Directions Evidence to the Contrary

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