fallow

all those afternoons

spent eating white light

didn’t seem like failure until i

was 30, until i was 35

woke up to st. amanita saying

we are between these fragile walls
and that was the problem

she was angry at everything she’d never had

and i was sorry for everything i’d
ever lost and
her best friend wanted to fuck us both

the sound me made was like

christ at twilight

was the freeway at the

end of december

the blind eyes and the

starving children with their mouths
full of salt

the deer in the headlights

then hit at seventy miles an hour

your uncertain laughter suddenly

swallowed up by your screams