A web of sewer, pipe, and wire connects each house to the others.

In 206 a dog sleeps by the stove where a small gas leak causes him 
to have visions; visions that are rooted in nothing but gas.

Next door, a man who has decided to buy a car part by part 
excitedly unpacks a wheel and an ashtray.

He arranges them every which way. It’s really beginning to take 
shape.

Out the garage window he sees a group of ugly children 
enter the forest. Their mouths look like coin slots.

A neighbor plays keyboards in a local cover band. 
Preparing for an engagement at the high school prom,

they pack their equipment in silence.

Last night they played the Police Academy Ball and all 
the officers slow-danced with target range silhouettes.

This year the theme for the prom is the Tetragrammaton.

A yellow Corsair sails through the disco parking lot

and swaying palms presage the lot of young libertines.

Inside the car a young lady wears a corsage of bullet-sized rodents. 
Her date, the handsome cornerback, stretches his talons over the 
molded steering wheel.

They park and walk into the lush starlit gardens behind the disco 
just as the band is striking up.

Their keen eyes and ears twitch. The other couples 
look beautiful tonight. They stroll around listening 
to the brilliant conversation. The passionate speeches.

Clouds drift across the silverware. There is red larkspur, 
blue gum, and ivy. A boy kneels before his date.

And the moon, I forgot to mention the moon.

I remember Kitty saying we shared a deep longing for 
the consolation prize, laughing as we rinsed the stagecoach.

I remember the night we camped out 
           and I heard her whisper 
“think of me as a place” from her sleeping bag 
           with the centaur print.

I remember being in her father’s basement workshop 
when we picked up an unknown man sobbing 
over the shortwave radio

and the night we got so high we convinced ourselves 
that the road was a hologram projected by the headlight beams.

I remember how she would always get everyone to vote 
on what we should do next and the time she said 
“all water is classic water” and shyly turned her face away.

At volleyball games her parents sat in the bleachers 
like ambassadors from Indiana in all their midwestern schmaltz.

She was destroyed when they were busted for operating 
a private judicial system within U.S. borders.

Sometimes I’m awakened in the middle of the night 
by the clatter of a room service cart and I think back on Kitty.

Those summer evenings by the government lake, 
talking about the paradox of multiple Santas 
or how it felt to have your heart broken.

I still get a hollow feeling on Labor Day when the summer ends

and I remember how I would always refer to her boyfriends 
as what’s-his-face, which was wrong of me and I’d like 
to apologize to those guys right now, wherever they are:

No one deserves to be called what’s-his-face.

I was in a dreamstate and this was causing a problem
with the traffic. I felt lonely, like I’d missed the boat,
or I’d found the boat and it was deserted. In the middle
of the road a child’s shoe glistened. I walked around it.
It woke me up a little. The child had disappeared. Some
mysteries are better left alone. Others are dreary, distasteful,
and can disarrange a shadow into a thing of unspeakable beauty.
Whose child is that?

Half costume jewel, half parasite, you stood
swaying to the music of cash registers in the distance
while a helicopter chewed the linings
of the clouds above the clear-cuts.
And I forgave the pollen count
while cabbage moths teased up my hair
before your flowers fell apart when they
turned into seeds. How resigned you were
to your oblivion, unlistening to the cumuli
as they swept past. And soon those gusts
will mill you, when the backhoe comes
to dredge your roots, but that is not
what most impends, as the chopper descends
to the hospital roof so that somebody's heart
can be massaged back into its old habits.

Mine went a little haywire
at the crest of the road, on whose other side
you lay in blossom.
As if your purpose were to defibrillate me
with a thousand electrodes,
one volt each.