Flood
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How dry the death was
and when he spoke all the summer street lights
showed was coal
in piles and cracked into walkways.
Said he’d been to Alabama
and Tennessee, dug a cave in some foothills
there and lined it with paw paw leaves.
We sang stupid songs all night
just to forget the racks of men’s ribs
hung over the river,
most of us supposed were dug out of graves,
but you’re careful anyway,
the bones wine-stained in the firelight
and clacking together in the slightest
hot breeze. Just up the hill was all the pavement
you could ask for,
working traffic signals, and an office building
dimly lit. We looked inside
and saw piranhas swimming
in a tank of green water,
bleached out and round
as country moons flashing through trees.
The telephone poles buzzed
overhead as we tipped a washtub of beer cans
against the mesh in the spring
that flowed cold out of Castor’s Hill
and over the roots of the bear oaks
like out of the soft, lanced side
of Christ. We were just begging to be released
that night, the boy with death blowing
over his dry, cracked lips, the moon in his blonde
hair. We walked between buildings in black
coats then looked over rocks
a mile down into the blind gorge
and got out our small bags of white bread.