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Something terrible has happened, will happen, something like
an implosion, or like a plague, like losing your job,
like moving back to your parent’s house, like your mom getting cancer,
like something you’re born with, leech child, like a finch chick
with false eyes at the corners of your beakless mouth,
leaving yourself to rot on the digital plateau,
going downstairs to eat rocky road ice cream just lousy with fat chunks of almond,
something ringing through you like a broken seal, like botulism,
you are a death drive, baby, you’re a corpse run, all full up with computer seed,
truth be told at first you didn’t even know what to do with your hands,
a bit like a first kiss, that is, except now celibate, now cold, now a plinth of ice
to worship within you, not getting anywhere until you start
waking up as your fingers twitch, searching for something in the bedsheets that isn’t there,
isn’t real, lost in a different space, the gray goo and the scrying mirror,
the one day you tried on the blue dress again and were shocked to find
that it still fit, but not quite the same — the clasp in the back had twisted,
digging in, scraping red, and you remembered the first night you wore it
when it was almost too cold, but it wasn’t at all, and you set your concealer with blush
and in the low light of the party someone told you that you were glowing
(someone said that!) so yes, there were good times, of course there were,
but not anymore, not as you drive past that gas station parking lot,
you know, the one where we stopped after the funeral, and so yes, I’m sorry,
and yes, I want to go back, but I can’t,
so now I’m the smooth skinned, blue-skinned, cat-eared and cloven hoof
technicolor dreamgirl of your dreams,
something astral or magical with a twenty-one-inch waist
capable of killing God or being a god or being your god
breaking you down and forgetting you, and me, and both of us, and the ceiling
and nothing is real, not unless I say it is, not unless I want it to be.
Missouri dark is a lot like regular dark except it holds you tighter. That great old God puts his hands over your face and says that you don’t have to see this. You don’t have to see any of it. That said, you’re gonna open your eyes so wide they might as well pop out your skull. You can find it in a limestone cave or your childhood bedroom or the street, if you know a guy. Going nowhere fast else you’ll miss it. Miss the nights where you didn’t have to see a thing. Didn’t have to worry about what was coming ’cause you’d never see it anyway. Didn’t have to worry about red 40 or rain runoff or tamping down the dust on the roads. It’s October, which means it’s the time of year where something’s always burning and somebody’s always getting married or getting cancer or something like that. And in the newborn cold the night dark wraps around you like a fleece that hasn’t knotted up yet. Friends in other places can call and say that you’ve got to get out of there; you’ve got to start running. But how do you say it. You’d miss the dark. The city lights are too bright. You’ve got to go to ground.
