a sonnet crown by Isaac Willis

Metaphysical Town Square
The hour is sweet, the season sweeter.
The people eat corn dogs under neon signs
and the air gushes lemons and batter
and bells ringing. BB pellets
plink little tin men. They rise again
while no one on the GraviTron pukes.
They float, men and women. They float
like a promise—a whole nation, in miniature,
walks on the moon while red devils blush
in the funhouse mirror. Cheeks rosy and stuffed
with pink candy floss. Under a tentpole,
a butter-sculpted cow tilts her head skyward.
The moon eclipses the sun. No one stares
at the hole in the sky. Nobody cares.

Metaphysical Town Square
The doors of the long-closed theater open.
Letters pick themselves up and click
quietly into their old slots on the marquee.
Inside, kernels pop, the smell of chemical
butter warming, and a man in a bow tie
and shirtsleeves sweeps the glossy floor.
Projectors oiled and spinning project
reels of color, of black and white. Still, life
is like the movies, or must be, for the beauty
parlor women who line up, double file, to catch
a matinee—something timeless, sad, To Have
and Have Not with Lauren Bacall. All
their boys fighting overseas. What glamor,
where, in Martinique, Bogart gets the girl.

Metaphysical Town Square
The sign reads Honk if you love Jesus. The end
isn’t near, though. Instead, something regular,
another Sunday in Metaphysical—the first part
of a four-part hymn. The word, read, was good;
thanks be to God. And lines of ash—soberly
crossed on foreheads just last Wednesday—
have all vanished. The finer points of the rapture
matter little to congregants in Metaphysical.
For them, every Sunday is Easter Sunday.
After service, they clamber into their Town
and Countries, their Odysseys, their radios
tuned—across the harmonium—to the gospel
station. This is the good news: a stream of cars
honking—all backed up, all waving each other on.

Metaphysical Town Square
This is the center of the universe. Sunset,
kids cruise the square in questionable cars.
Held together with nothing but duct tape,
they glide. They honk at every passing friend
who waves back, as they, too, pass under
the clock tower’s shadow—seconds
ticking over them. It chimes every quarter hour
some holy melody. Joy to the World. Joy
to town squares, to late-80s Fords, mufflers
suspended by coat hangers or prayer. Joy to summer
that sweeps by in second hands, speedometers,
to the moon wheeling overhead. A weather vane
turns coolly in the wind, a winged animal.
The kids remain, in this town, unchangeable.

Metaphysical Town Square
And in its center, a fountain, and in
its center, a statue, neoclassic
as the columns rising from the courthouse
portico across the road. Parked pickups
form a perfect circle around all this.
The statue, of course, a man clad in gray,
gray suit and tie, everything gray but this:
a plaque—patinaed, at his feet—and a streak
of bird shit on his lapel. Someone hung
garlands from his shoulders once. Someone, once,
a brother in Phi Delta, draped a toga over
his cold skin. Then he was epic, Homeric,
forgotten great-grandson of the god of wit
and sleep. Asleep, some firemen took it down.

Metaphysical Town Square
Across the road, Bill Brown clips the ceremonial ribbon.
Dollar General lit in electric yellow letters. Farmers frown
for a moment, say, Good Lord. Say, Hell and high water.
The inside comes alive. Ice cream in this aisle; jerky in the next.
Knowing this is a luxury, and luckily meat (neatly wrapped)
goes for, oh, fifty cents a patty. Things turn quick when
some shoppers, rifling through crates of ramen, ram carts
and cuss. Shortly after, in the lot, they say their sorries.
In this shining oasis, truckers smoke. Moons turn,
tied to a set of chimes. Under that unexpected constellation,
a sign—In vino veritas—and the wine comes bladdered
and boxed. Simple exaltations. Yesterday, after a bottle
of zin, Bill mowed his yard. His neighbor complained
it was a zoo. Sorry, he said, as he sharpened the blade.

Metaphysical Town Square
In Metaphysical, nothing shines
brighter than storefronts after dark,
faithfully fluorescent. Windows shimmer,
glass smoother than water to the touch,
though inside every dusty shelf stands empty.
Every blouse once sold proudly at what was
Witzig’s Department Store now hangs cold
and moth-bit in a lonely widower’s closet.
And when he opens the door, and the light
comes on, it all floods back: windows stuffed with
shirts; a town perfumed with summer and bread
and the buzz of neon, again, and a welcome
bell chimes, or so he hears. The line between Sorry,
We’re Closed and Come on In as thin as grief.

Metaphysical Town Square
Of egg cartons. Of milk bottles. Of
women in A-line dresses and men
in worsted wool. Of mail incoming
and outgoing, a row of red flags.
Of rising early, pre-dawn. Over-easy eggs
from the neighbor’s one-eyed hen.
Of starting every day with one nation,
indivisible. Of prayers uttered for
yet another harvest. Of neighbors.
Of won’t-you-bes. Of kids walking
the dog—they rinse the spent bottles,
setting them out, nights, to be collected—
Of goodnight moons. Of fires dying.
Of chimneys smoking like spires.

Metaphysical Town Square
Every man gets, with his shoes, a second chance,
at least in this alley. The Brunswick hums. The ball
glides along the wax to its breakpoint, arcing out
to the gutter where, like a world whirling around
some star, it cuts back to strike the head pin. Here,
the men have theories. There are two types of people,
says Jake Goodman over his paper-cup beer,
nodding off already as Dale, his league buddy
eyes a seven-ten split. The bar’s stained mirror mirrors
their mechanical arms, glasses sloshing up—and down—
back up. Here, they pretend there is no service tomorrow,
no hymns or psalms. Just this ball, with a polished universe
turning inside. Just the machine where it meets its end.
Gently, it picks them up and sets them down again.

Metaphysical Town Square
Sure, the windows droop, buildings fallen
fully out of square. But this is still the home
of precision. Even as the English Ivy takes
another façade, it crumbles right down
the mortar line. A large crack cleaves
the sidewalk on Main, the only thing holding
it together this pink latex glove, forgotten.
Every year, the earth moves farther from the sun.
Shadows grow longer, straighter. The clock, even,
still right twice. This is the home of precision.
Of façades. Another county over, a mother
unpacks her old life and finds, in a box
of cleaning supplies, one flamingo-pink glove.
Every day something falls apart in immaculate ways.

Metaphysical Town Square
The end of Metaphysical arrives like
planes making contrails of a clear sky,
that fragile firmament crosshatched
by flyover ghosts. That, and those small lights
pulsing in the air. From way up there,
passengers look down at the boundary
of road and field and road. And foundry
smoke rises to meet them. And where
do they go? The coast of some antique land—
or else LA. They may connect in O’Hare
or Midway, wondering at the yellow glare
of skyscrapers. Yellow cabs. Crosswalk hands
urge them to stop for 6 more seconds. The end
of it all comes like air brakes. A hiss. Silence.

Metaphysical Town Square
after Giorgio di Chirico
A mother watches her son hoist a box
of FRAGILE from the lip of a U-Haul.
The late summer coats nearly everything
in light—an ancestor’s lost game, daughter
chasing after an antique hoop with a stick,
a silhouette. Dad’s trophies from state
shine in the yard amid the cardboard and tape,
and a Radio Flyer catches fire while the sun arcs
overhead. That is, until the silo’s shadow
swings over the whole street. To unpack
a memory is to see it, shining, again. Then again,
some things seem dark even in the light of day.
A train whistles. In the garage, Dad ducks the sun,
sighting down the barrel of his dad’s rusted gun.

Metaphysical Town Square
with a line from Edgar Lee Masters
There’s a woman on fire in the road
outside Trainor’s. She steps from the curb
toward the courthouse, her hair and eyes
Ram red, dually red, smoking like a Hemi
with a double-barreled shotgun. All week,
she’s been adamant: This time, she’ll kill him.
The other ladies in the parlor say Good for you
before turning back to their People, their LIFE.
Today is her anniversary, and as she flashes
toward Judge Standard’s chambers, barrels
loaded, townsfolk wish her well. No one
minds the smell of burning flesh or hair.
Just two shots, and a judge’s bench burning bright.
The smoke rises—till the fire is nothing but light—

Metaphysical Town Square
And there is nobody there anymore,
the doors boarded up or just hanging
from their hinges. What was, once,
a shining factory joins the litany
of closed. Closed for back taxes,
for offshore accounts, for downsizing
and outsourcing. At the Maytag plant,
a squirrel makes his home in a forgotten
washer drum. He sleeps all winter. And
don’t whole nations, entire industries, drift
to sleep? The bottom line is one country,
one continent, away. In what was, once,
this factory, a drum spins, but only because
some hungry animal shifts as he dreams.

Metaphysical Town Square
The hour is sweet, the season sweeter.
The doors of the long-closed theater open.
and the sign out front reads Honk if you love Jesus.
This is the center of the universe. Kids cruise
around the fountain, around that statue.
Mondrian clips a ceremonial ribbon
where, nights, his storefront shines glass
and egg cartons and milk bottles. And
everyone gets shoes and a second chance.
Sure, the windows droop, buildings gone.
But this is the end of Metaphysics. Come now,
mothers, watch your sons rise from their boxes.
Put out the fires inside you.
There is nobody there anymore.