Move the specked sidewalk under you in waves.
Though you swim against your density,
your feet chained—gravity to pavement:
Move. They’re gaining on you.
Home is just up the block.
Mom’s rock garden, its frayed grass,
and toe prints of violets,
all burst through the hump of your lawn.
Push away the blonde cement,
drag yourself past the row homes,
past that boarded up one,
with its floors falling in on each other.
Wood jags have landed dusty in its cellar,
in the rusted sink and beside the washer.
A nail rolls into the water heater’s underworld—
with its dissolving valves and centipede corpses.
You too are twisted behind that boiler like Elvis and toilet,
in secret and silence—while the world out the
blacked out, spider-webbed window goes on
and functions just fine without you.
At least they can’t find you here.
deuce coupe 