A.V. CHRISTIE

Signs

I was driving around and wanting
a wooden tongue
so I’d be out past saying,
past suggesting.

Stitch my lips shut
to come-hither-
I-am-one-of-the-wonders-
of-the-world-I-am-a-neighborhood-
too-dangerous-to-visit.

Soft palate. Twists. Clack of tongue.
Any red tree.
Tequila sunrise
without the sunrise in it.

Then the afternoon’s
dark wooden door’s
hand-lettered sign:    NO ADORATION TODAY

O, random and oracular lettering,
side-street accuracy.

I want
the   2 MILLION RENOVATIONS—

my new value now so beyond reckoning
as to prompt historic, fuchsia-laden,

hanging-garden-type devotions.