For The Record

we are like that car
I walk by parked on Thomas Street
its back seat and passenger side crammed
with papers, books, magazines, newspapers
and atop this heap of memory scrap pile
                                            waits
a 2.5-gallon can of gasoline

John Burgess, a New York native, has lived in the Pacific Northwest for 20 years. He has read his poems on three of Seattle's seven hills.