Careful now. All the knives must be aligned
or the city falls. Twitch and wake. Rain
arrives with dawn—season out of time,
no butterflies or moths. Squirrels hunt cats,
cats shelter with foxes. The girls lounge
in the fallen blossom of cigarette ash.
They are more beautiful than they can
imagine, and not only to the low-slung
driver thumping bass like a blood-thrum.
In the doppler of his wake, they roll
their skirts up higher, compete to see who hates
their legs most. At night, they twitch, restless
with nicotine and vague desire (indeterminacy
is its nature) (and its power). They want
the world, those girls, and stickily compete
to see who hates it most. That’s how bad
they want it, with its extinctions
and expulsions, evasions, invasions and
evaporations. With every crack
that doesn’t break their backs, luck flips
them past the row of knives, the low-slung
bass, the sullen sky. Newly-hatched,
like rain at dawn, they glisten cold.
Cold, and ashing into beauty.