This, the society another day might have provided as a service. Upon satin pillow cases she reads from the book of death in the land. More than she had thought possible, the man of such rearing had slopped hogs and judged bulls the way artists look at painting. The moon makes him now a poet, but cabinet doors to cabinets stick, drawers to dressers jam tight, and kitchen shelves sink like ships into the corners of the rotted floor. Oak planks warp, shift, move in drying out of summer sun.
Apples ripen yellow green, red flowers thistle asphalt, cosmos burst reds, whites, purples.
Slippery like a reel of fire folds the tongue above a piano of which no photograph can be taken, the lighting too poor for subtle comedy, the costumes too worn for television, and the sky too big to be taken in. Moon silvers between black branches of the ever sagging apple tree. Dogs bark in the distance from a fear of following men into deserts braced by cacti against the sky. A narrow Arizona stair creaks, whispers fog the glass windows, readers of poems walk hallways, read graffiti, and mutter prayers to the fading wind. O woman loose your legs, go swimming with sharks, Win from them their teeth moon white beyond pale skin.