I was talcuming my windshield
below the basalt slabs on our dead-end street.
The chrome crackled within earshot of the pines.
My big glittering black eyes snagged
on a small derisive spume of dust—
he who in shapes makes visible—
and I thought back on the bliss of the many,
the oval radiances of my bony knees.
Blackmailer, nicest smile, false move.

In the rear-view mirror I was dozing,
knifefishes played among the weeds.
A huge stag beetle brought me cookies.
Take me back to Saint Looey, sideways,
and give me a silver dollar
dredged from the murky green water,
the life-stream, the blood,
at-one-ment in a glorious blue light.
I brake, skidding, the steering wheel

thrashing like an eel, almost edible.
The brother of the left-hand path, also known
as Eddie, twinkled out of Chiseltown
to nest beside me in the final stage.
Now this was palpable, his blood bright,
past the small warts and radar aerials
like anesthesia in a circular route
we sped. Orientation reflexes deviating
from our landmark destination, the smoking dog.

We devoured our prey; little one, is it
memory again? Whippets scattered into the hedges,
and the road turned to gravel as we churned
up the steep last hill. A pigeon leered
before we scattered him. Transmuted,
desireless, , thud. “Get the ice bucket, Eddie,
things are beginning to evaporate,
we are at the threshold, the stone wall.”
I could sense the carport, the aggregate of feelings,

the path out teachers took, just ahead
in the fawn-colored afternoon, suspended
above the smug charities, in the vicinity
of the screwy briefcases and narrower caves.
We were thrusting our way into the actual
storage batteries, hunching toward canary-yellow.