The redbuds in the park strip show

blood orange over a couple 

nodding out on a traffic-calming 

bump out. It should be shelter weather. 

There used to be a body shop, 

a wrecking yard and a deli

where now a work crew is rushing up

another row of boxy condos.

Today I’m interchangeable

as electrons, locked in orbit 

around the dispensary’s drive-thru. 

I amble from one second to the next

till it’s another degree hotter

and everything’s changed places again.

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Lance Newman‘s poems have appeared in print and web magazines in the US, UK, and Australia, including Action/Spectacle, Blazevox, Dusie, otoliths, No Tell Motel, Sugar House Review, Stride, West Wind Review, and Zyzzyva. He has published two chapbooks: Come Kanab (Dusi-e/chaps Kollectiv, 2007) and 3by3by3 (Beard of Bees, 2010). His first full-length collection, Proverbs of Earth, was published by Spuyten Duyvil Press in 2025. Newman teaches literature, media, and writing at Westminster University in Salt Lake City, Utah. For more information, see http://www.lancenewman.org