Pathologies

If you see me on a Brazilian street, winding
between houses the colors of easter eggs
slowly up a hillside, perhaps ducking into a
botequim as the rains whip up, or leaned
against a Volkswagen Beetle, bracing my heel
to cobblestones as I instinctively pull the foil paper
from a pack of cigarettes with my teeth,
possessing in no case a lick of the language,
then quietly, so that I never notice your presence,
tuck a plane ticket into my pocket and slip away.

Should you ever, driving through a Latvian forest,
pull to the grassy shoulder for a piss break
and, through the slender, ashy trees,
identify my gait, keep your eyes on the stream.
your shoes and socks dry for your travels.

All the new words are flavorless communion wafer
Latin. How can a textbook tell us how to distinguish
between the stress an airplane’s wings endure
and the stress that steamrolls over our souls?
At the coast, paint curls away from the aluminum frames
of a double-wide’s windows before it chips to the ground.
If you see me through the lattice beneath, sleeping in the sand,
no, no you really didn’t. Can’t you hear it too?

Jayce Russell is an assistant professor of English at a rural community college and serves as poetry warlock for the literary journal Outlook Springs.