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JAMES FINNEGAN

Mark Them Well

Digits of french fries, x-ray of a hand
shown through a crumpled paper sack,
soaked in a puddle after rain. White rose
petals caught in a spiderweb by the back stair.
Some would pass without a glance, a thing
you would stop to stare at, study for several minutes,
a half-hour, as long as it took to understand.
To make out the Chinese characters for kingdom,
waterfall and moon in the skidmarks below the overpass.
Code of the clay tiles missing from a neighbor's roof.
The teeth's calibrations around an ear of corn.
To take notice of this, these. It is not a sign,
nor ancient augury: a doll's head used for a gas cap.
Objects in stasis, through silence, that speak⁠ —
that mean, if only by simple existence.