he knew where to go when the water cleared
the trembling prairie, the pink tower
a walk along a gravel road
through key lots
cryptoglyphic
through time, through anti-time
its empty pecan trees, its docked container ships
pausing to think
picking petals
on dirty rigs crushed by tires
Alabo sub rosa
in a fentanyl wave
it started at a bar called The Book Depository
on Orangefield rd, in Orangefield, Texas
many lonely Years of Lead ago
a secret violence
winding its way home
to the flowered culverts
of the Ninth Ward
the giallo films he wrote in my mind
Abraded in the Flattened Grass
Still Alive Somehow
stayed hidden
for years
in the maw
of a willow
he knew how to find me
in air like vines
long day winding down
its entrails
brightly coded
in the cracks of the sidewalk
exhausted haruspex
of the afternoon sun
the feared communiqué
for which he waited
never came
only the dial tone
laid flat
over broken goldenrod
and the man who stood still
in the middle of the road
he dreamt of Gog
warring alone
in the hidden dumping field
behind Jackson Barracks
flooded in elderflower wine
a halbert
snapped in October’s narrow heat
all this
and no witnesses
he slept with the day
playing Myst on his phone
when Hyams Fountain awakened
a double death knell for Lost Love Lounge
its raintree flowers
felled for no one
a cloud to bridge the Industrial Canal
and tunnel deep deep below it
