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If I were blind

and dressed entirely in black,

standing in the middle

of the highway

at night,

would you be my seeing eye?

Would you guide me

to feel as relaxed

as if I were on my porch

in the sunshine,

or would you let me

smell the greasy diesel,

feel the cold, empty air,

and trust only

that I’d be crushed

by a raging juggernaut?

That cool afternoon, out on the lake

with your brother and sister-in-law,

you and I affected an odd new friendship.

Stuck in the middle of that ugly summer,

I was drawn by your cheerful insistence

that I participate even though we were

no longer required to love each other.

I was no water skier, but tried it cold turkey,

continually losing my balance and falling.

"He’s down" was a burning, strangling

rope of chagrin, blistering my ears,

constricting my throat, and lashing

my sweaty, sunburned forehead.

Repeatedly, I faltered on that shaky single ski

and stubbornly clung to the other rope,

exactly as you’re not supposed to do,

and I bobbed like a broken scrap of flotsam

getting slowly, silently waterlogged.

I wanted to shrivel out of my life

preserver and sink to the bottom of the lake,

but I was pulled, weak and defeated,

into the boat like a deer from a frozen river.

Shrinking away from the jolting shock

to the eyeballs that I feared I’d feel

making contact with anyone on board,

I stared fuzzily at the foam safety fob

lynched and swinging from the ignition,

designed to keep the key, against its will,

from diving for the bottom should it drop.

That cold night, I stood at the window,

and the moon towed me into the sky.

I floated there effortlessly for hours,

awake as you and the world slept,

letting something big wonder for me

how it had happened in just that way

and what there would be to do next.

The process of getting to know

a lover for life or just for tonight

becomes like that of the tides.

It’s unique yet routine every time,

as the waves heave old and new life,

entombing treasures they’d washed up,

revealing fresh ones in their wakes.

You understand something new about her,

like the stunning shape of the moon

in a phase you’ve never noticed before;

its simultaneous light and gravity

pull you toward her, push you back,

and you find yourself slightly farther along

the endless coastline of who she is,

propelled by the swelling surge of the moment

to be eased upon the next soft beach,

or badly bruised on an outcrop of rock.

Her words were calm enough to swallow,

yet her voice twanged and oscillated

like a Jew’s harp as she spoke.

He heard the music and felt himself

falling, though he was standing still.

He felt something haphazardly strike

his soul, or at least what seemed to be

his soul—the reactor core, just north

of his tightly-coiled intestines; his soul

was now soiled, matted with gore

like a rodent’s fur on a worn tire,

and he knew it would not be long

before enough trucks had squashed it,

rendering it indistinguishable from

the countless other oil spots on the road—

from the countless, thankless, blameless,

lifeless oil spots on the road.

I see him go down hard on his driveway,

pinned under a cart and nickel-colored keg.

I leave the dog with my wife and rush over—

or I am pulled—to this man I barely know.

Grabbing the cart, I ask if he’s all right,

and he cowers and shouts, "Who’s there?!"

as if it’s dark and he’s guarding a castle.

I answer him in a normal voice, adding

that I’m the neighbor down the road.

He acknowledges, but is ashamed to have

another man see him helpless like this,

or he’s angry because, in lifting the cart,

I’ve wedged the sole of his shoe

under the cart’s base, trapping him again.

He scolds me, and I smirk, thinking,

I strain to lift the cart and heavy keg,

and he slowly frees himself, recovering

his fallen hearing aid from the cement.

It very nearly matches his shaking palm,

and I think, flesh…Crayola…is that racist?

He’s not hurt, thanks me, refuses further help

with his "apple cider," and we leave him.

I think about his son, not there to help;

his weakness; his pride, squashed to a bruise;

and gravity’s eternal, inevitable force,

trying its best to shove him into the ground.

I visit when I can in my young life,

and always his oldness accepts me, like food.

He grins with cracked, popcorn kernel teeth,

and gleams, fish-eyed through thick glasses

whose clarity lets him carry on his artistry.

Always, if there’s a project at hand,

a swooping sculpture or blazing painting,

it is put aside like the dishes from lunch.

He clears a space amidst designs and dreams—

a space for me to share thoughts and coffee.

Nobu talks, and I work at cracking walnuts

and trying my best to understand him.

He discusses art, and motion, and sleek hulls

that will never touch water; his blueprints

join the cockroach husks as perfect trash.

Like a mirror, he shows my hints of madness,

and from the other side of a desperate time says,

"When you are in the ‘banana stage,’ at least

there are guys who know where you are,

and where you want to go, and can help you."

We discuss unconsciousness: its importance

in something safe like writing or painting,

which he says should flow with no thinking,

and its danger, which he shows by his hand,

badly scarred from a moment’s power saw.

The coffee is reduced to dregs, and he must rest.

I drive around and reflect on our meetings until

I see him again, walking, as he always does

to keep himself old and thin, and perhaps to keep

madness from ever catching up with him again.

Joshua grips the molded plastic wand

with chubby, still-growing fingers,

and with a rough, delicate swipe at the sky,

he sends forth wobbling gobs of liquid glass.

His tiny face tightens into wrinkles

like an old sailor’s as he laughs

at something the bubbles have said;

then he plunges in to continue their talk.

He presents his youthful essence to us,

captures the air of his world for a few moments

in these amorphous, drifting capsules,

fantastic in their gleaming rainbow wrappers.

Some of his joy sails over the high hedge,

perhaps popping on a startled neighbor’s plate,

and some of it settles as a soapy, wet firework

explodes on his nose. He blinks and smiles.

As I watch him here, at play on his island,

it’s really quite simple: He is three; I am not.

And he is thinking about everything but that

while I am thinking about that, and only that.

After I was gone,

the tourists, the lawyers,

the realtors, the scavengers

all had their rubber-necked gawk,

all trooped through

like raiding regiments

and had their dead-cat curious look

at the basement bunker

that was my secret trove.

All the important works

of my life were laid out

more neatly than I’d ever done,

like polished wares

on a flea market carpet,

and it surprised me

as though I were one of the onlookers.

Could it have been

that it was only in death

that I had finally been able

to organize my life

like the ability in a dream

to speak a foreign tongue

with perfect fluency

and pronunciation?

These days, the youngest of a friend’s five children

is crushed by a truck, and I think, Oh well, four left.

My aunt, in memory of the beehive hair, cat eye specs

and devilish smile lies gaping and vacant at last

like a broken hull on the ocean floor, but that’s in Texas.

And my father, now seventy, has a faulty heart valve,

which may be replaced as if on a ’68 Buick, it seems.

I keep waiting for the shock, the sadness, the regret

as if it will come because it’s there on the schedule

like a bus at this stop, but it’s broken down miles away.

Is the TV to blame for this flat-lined indifference,

or is it the years gone by with no tragedy but TV?

Where the hell has the dread of death been taken?

Years ago, there was a fear I didn’t have to think about.

It flashed across the screen of young life so fast

like the headlights of a seventeen-year-old girl’s car

on and off a hairpin turn with dirty, drunken angels;

like the calm yet fierce face of a doting boyfriend

looming over the bushes as I emerged with his girl;

like the coma of a loved one, grinding hot in my gut;

like the plane lurching back up and coming in again.

And now, as I scratch the fourth mosquito bite,

I casually wonder if it’s the West Nile virus,

which I heard about, along with the world, on TV.

Steve Bridge

Today, for some reason, out of the thousands

of chances over the years,

the gritty, minty toothpaste in my 40-year-old mouth

gets into my blood

and goes straight to a place in my brain.

Now I’m dashing over gnarled, rain-darkened pine roots

and soft needles with my erratically jolting flashlight

throwing laser beams around through the night.

There are other campers—boys

whose rich, New York City parents

have gotten them out of their summer hair

for a month or two—and it’s a wonder

that one of those roots doesn’t trip us up,

knocking out our flashlights,

splitting our chins on a brutal teammate root,

and causing us to bloody our pajama tops.

We would go to the country doctor

for six—no, make it seven stitches,

and grin with tough-guy pride,

letting the others twang the ends of the threads

like banjo strings,

and then we would proudly display the stains

to our parents when we unpacked our bags at home.

But that scenario was destined to be

someone else’s memory.

In mine, we crowd around the sink,

squeezing out colossal blobs of white paste

—enough to make snowmen from—

and telling corny and dirty jokes

through our rabid, foaming lips.

Then we spit tremendous streams, like avalanches,

bearing down on hapless insect villagers,

and then becoming galaxies

as they swirl down the elongated tin trough,

and then, see that bubble? There goes Saturn, down the drain.

We swat dive-bombing moths from our faces,

sending them careening back upwards

to crash repeatedly

into the filthy yellow bulbs above.

We tilt our heads under the spigots

to gulp mouthfuls of metallic, face-freezing water

and swish it around, excessively,

until just the right moment,

and then we squirt it out

in a streaming volley

at one of our cabin-mates,

while simultaneously trying to dodge his return fire.

We push and yell, refill and swish,

bare our gleaming teeth, and fire again.

Then we scamper back over the roots

—lurking alligators now—but the ground is quicksand,

and we must use the roots,

nimbly leaping from one to the next

before their snapping jaws can grab us,

and our flashlight beams dart wildly again,

this time becoming the slashing swords

of vulgar, bloodthirsty pirates.

And then I return,

staring hard at the gray in my stubble,

and I swish and spit.

Steve Bridge

Like squinting trolls, we slip from darkness

into a glaring, man-made chamber

and feel the sorcerer’s spell release its hold.

As though not quite alive, we move,

greeting balance like a stranger as we stand.

We marvel at our miracle feet that guide us

between the rows of sharp, magnetic beacons

that line the narrow runway far below.

Then, at the door, the uniformed killers

stand with their polished flashlights

and point us toward imperfect, hazy places

that await through scorching sun or slicing rain.

And the waxy faces of those unaffected

soften and fade as we glide away past them.

And where was that space ship—that chariot—

that steam train—that dugout canoe

we came in just a couple hours ago?

Finally found, it’s not the same somehow.

It doesn’t belong to us—a cigarette case

with our monogram, only we don’t smoke.

Still, we must claim it as our own;

we must work the controls to assure ourselves

of returning to that place from before

full of furniture, doubts, and hunger;

of arguments, pain, and plastic—

that place of sounds and situations

growing and demanding, like a baby

or a pile of dirty dishes in the sink.

Above the sizzling plates of grub

on the oily ledge of the pick-up window,

the garish heat lamps ripple the air.

An angry cook sets her jaw and turns away,

gripping a fistful of dripping bacon.

The snake-necked microphone slithers out

into the pantry, gilded with frayed duct tape,

and they all avoid it, leaning away as they pass,

as though fearing it may rear up and strike.

A bubbly waitress gossips to her cohort, showing off

the t-shirt she’s gotten from a family member.

It depicts Uncle Sam as a magician, pulling a cruise

missile out of his top hat for an Afghan audience,

and it reads, "Now you see it, now you’re dead."

And through the glass, a gray-toothed trucker

grimly chuckles, proudly sporting

his FDNY cap. They’re his boys.

At the rounded counter, an elderly man’s

uneasy countenance belies regret

at not being able to go and fight once more.

He wears a tattoo on his forearm, an American

eagle on his cap, and a sweatshirt that reads,

"Wanted Dead or Alive: Osama Bin Laden."

Waitress #2, all business now, slam dunks a chit,

impaling it on the countertop spike, amazingly

not running through her hand in the process.

And I, full of American eggs, potatoes, bacon, coffee,

and sentiment, pay the tab and make my way

past the line at the door and the newspaper machines,

stacked to the glass with ominous headlines, and

out into the light autumn rain. In the parking lot,

a license plate depicts a silhouetted farm and reads,

"Indiana: Crossroads of America."

"I am in command," she tells herself

behind the greasy wheel

of her fat, white American car

in the winter afternoon.

She jerks the window a shot glass breadth

just wide enough to tap her ashes,

which she regards as she does life.

The dull rainbow swirl of her yellowed

fingernails’ mother-of-pearl polish

flashes for an instant in the icy sun,

but then the window snatches it back

like the raising blade of a guillotine

sucking up the bloody cropped locks

of an artfully executed martyr,

letting just a wisp of smoke escape.

Is she not deserving of this car, this life,

these friends?—all talking about her

behind her back, anyway—and is she

not allowed the right to self-destruct?

The ashes flutter once or twice, and then

they’re swiftly whipped by the car’s vortex

and scatter on the road’s shrugged shoulders,

where they touch down, breaking up again,

the muddled dust of her charred resolve.

Someone steps on the gas, and our necks snap back—

snapping turtles under tons of mud, centuries, fossils

evolution pushing our heads into their headrests.

The speed makes us eternally nauseous and slow

as we struggle to pull our G-forced faces forward.

Out the window world we glimpse dizzying flashes

of perfect growing rows prepared by sober men.

They grow differently here from somewhere else,

but regardless of the crop mirror crop, they’re the same,

and we must avert our eyes before we vomit.

Whether our hands create, maintain, repair, or destroy,

our lot in life is exactly like that of those who drift.

We breathe the soft, sly chemicals nose-hard

and grow thicker around the eyes, teeth, belly,

knowing that the driver will speed us to our deaths.

We fall back in the passenger’s seat to die,

and then through the eyes of a child once closed

from those sickening, dizzying sideways lines,

now opened, we fix on and endlessly approach

a giant porcupine: snow furiously slashing the dark.

I try to drive, but nature takes the wheel

and pulls my screeching tires from the road.

I soar above the heartland’s hidden fields

and get surprising traction in the air;

the trees are islands on a sea of fog,

which takes away the fertile land beneath,

and "here" becomes another place of mine.

I’m on a tropical island’s towering peak,

and a nearby mountain’s upper half

appears at altitude above the clouds

that lie upon Pacific’s boundless blue.

It looks like harmless fog above dry land,

the mountain seeming "only over there,"

and I could reach it in an hour by car.

These images are mingled in my mind

and I imagine the fantastic mix

of mindscapes that are only found in dreams:

I’m thrown off deck into the startled trees

upon my sloop’s jolt back down to the earth;

I hold my breath and swim out through the roof

when my Ferrari dives into the sea.

As I approach the lake, I breathe

the stink of scattered perch, dropped

like bison shot from passing trains.

Then, beyond the cold campfire ashes,

by a deformed dwarf of a willow,

the pale, bloated corpse of a bowfin,

massive and fantastically prehistoric,

gathers flies like museum patrons.

I respect its uniqueness, its lungs,

and think it should receive a better rite.

I kneel and pinch its crisp tailfin,

and like a bishop lifting a smoking orb,

I peel it from the earth’s baked crust.

It swings back from my outstretched hand,

scales glinting like a grandfather clock’s

pendulum, dull in a darkened hallway,

and momentum tears a section of flesh,

dropping it back to the parched mud.

I swing it forward now, releasing

with relief at exactly the right moment,

and it sails, swimming for the clouds.

It stalls out at its arc’s blinding peak,

then plunges into rotten leaf-hued water.

It bobs just once, and then it sinks,

maggots boiling from its mouth, boiling again

as the bluegill swarm to devour them.

The train eases lackadaisically

into Shinjuku station,

like a grazing whale.

The car is nearly empty,

which, in itself, is strange.

A small, dirty breeze

comes through, not caring

who has to be home for dinner.

It carries with it

a frail and quiet presence,

which glides over the linoleum

to rest at my feet:

the fragile, empty husk

of a deceased dragonfly,

encircled by a few wisps of hair

discarded by busy commuters.

The two seem so tightly bonded

that the dragonfly’s death

appears to have come

in the crush at the height of rush hour.

Now, mingled with the hair—perhaps

of those who’d unknowingly killed it—

the dragonfly seems so huge and beautiful.

Its body is remarkably well-kept

for having perished in such a place.

I can see it—maybe yesterday,

maybe a few hours ago—

dipping and swerving

better than any swallow could

above the reeds of its favorite marsh

on the edge of Tokyo.

I can hear it rattle its wings

in a display of power and flair.

But then, I sweat in a freezing flash,

for I was man ugly once

far from this peaceful place

with beer and shotgun,

and I obliterated

a magnificent dragonfly

along with the twig it was perched on

because there was nothing else to shoot.

I could have killed

many times since then,

but this would be what I remember.

I see it now as vengeance,

in the form of brother tombou,

my Banquo’s ghost,

my Scrooge’s nightmare,

my own personal spectre.

The dragonfly looks up at me,

its eyes, gone hollow, once

intense and deeper than the Earth.

It looks so much as though

it could rise up and fly again,

but then the small, dirty breeze is back,

and the hair and dragonfly

slip silently onward,

arc to the right, and drift away.

A woman on the platform

eyes me intensely

through the closing glass doors

of my shame,

and the train slowly pulls away.

Driving home at night in Alabama,

I admire the late May fireflies

that flash and vanish along my way

like misleading lighthouse beacons

in the professional darkness.

Seeing them turns me wistful, but

nothing poignant or significant

from my past comes to mind,

or at least nothing I care to recall.

Then, snik! my windshield erupts

in an eerie flash of green,

and I fight to drive straight as I stare.

"I never knew they could do that,"

my stranger’s voice tells the empty car.

The glowing, growing splatter on the glass

becomes a luminous puddle of paint,

pushed in every direction, as though

being blown with a straw from below

by an unseen, giggling child.

But then the ruptured guts begin to fade,

and the magic chemicals disperse,

erased by buffeting gusts as I race.

Just for fun, I clock it by the odometer,

and the glow lasts for 1.2 miles.

Pretty long, I think, for the first time,

but then, at this speed, gone in a flash.

After nothing returns in front of me,

a notion clings, smear-like, and I realize

I had been thinking about my career.

The salmon slowly glide back and forth,

back and forth through the clear

yet greenish water of the tank

in which they’ll remain, oddly calm

until it’s just before the dinner hour.

The fish man stands in yellow boots

on glistening hardwood planks,

looking to the door as if expecting

his mother to storm in and scold him.

Instead, the evening Patron enters,

towering above him on her heels,

and points a wrinkled, ring-clad claw

with its liquid cherry new car polish

toward the tank to demand her prize.

He’s already got it in the net, by the tail,

on the counter, and then – whack!

his blood-blackened club comes down

on its head with a wet blow of death,

giving its tail, and me, a shudder.

His scaler flashes, blaze and blur,

scattering the perfect rainbow flakes;

his force is such that one scale flies up

— a crystal of life, snowflake unique—

then it slices down, like an errant Frisbee

and alights in the Patron’s sculpted locks,

black, but grayish-yellow at the roots.

Her reptilian jaw jumps, lean and sinewy

as she clenches it and sucks the life

from a cigarette in an onyx stem.

She’s perfection in her jewels and fur,

the ridiculous scale glinting in her hair

in the dull light from above the tank.

Only I can see this tiny armor plate,

gleaming spectra from its lofty perch,

and I smile at the patron’s serious face

that doesn’t smile in return. Then I laugh

as she leans in, reaching forth to snatch

the freshly butchered fish, whose remnant

nestles to her gray roots, out of view.

She pinches the taped paper parcel, and,

tight-lipped, exits on her clacking heels.

The pattern that we usually see

is that at strategic vantage points

atop certain naturally spaced

territorial tree limbs, or perfect

unnaturally spaced fenceposts

along the highway, hawks

will perch, unmoving in the wind

—but for their ruffling feathers—

to survey the earth, their buffet,

and to absorb morning-torn rodents.

Or they will soar, unmoving on the wind

—but for their ruffling feathers.

But this time, as I drive, I’m captured,

and an altered pattern snags the mind

like an acid-tripping spider’s web

when I see a hawk in neither place,

hunching over a road-killed rabbit,

and before my unborn son can ask,

I tell him that it could be just old age,

hard times, or simply opportunity,

but I know he senses shame

for this noble bird who has lost the hunt,

rusting in the wake of passing man.