Under the stoplight the desperate lady glows green.
The vole by the road squeaks for a baseboard,
a container, afraid. Trembling and distended,
her body, an old boot fattened full of rain.
And God pulls on her hair to make it grow
a little. I step to the sidewalk and age
terribly in the long gasp before she breaks
and bleeds on a jagged fender. A dandelion
spreads its seeds on the asphalt
like hairy fallen stars. The slowly dying
have awful names: Elizabeth, Marty.
Elizabeth—I touch her hand, I am
marked. I bear a black dot. And God pulls
His own hair. Only the black dot breathes.
It is almost singing from my palm. The dot
drags threads through my hand like it knows my
future. On the rim of endless witnessing
I'm charting its limits, a forensic topographer.
At times I tilt my head over the edge, feel
my brain's watchful quadrant pulling away
like a slow boat, and I stuff papers in the gap;
my mooring lines, they start crumpled but flatten.
I'm taut near to tearing. Brain liquid stripes me.
