Married And, and: Windchill, and: Road Trip

Married And

Married and the door to her officelocked from the inside, a woodendoor with faces spiraled into the grain.

And a Sunday, and our hands,our mouths, our hands and tongues,the air-conditioner's low hum,

a strip of tissue paper tied to the ventsquiggling its red line. And our tongues.Married and her son's 5 x 7 on her desk,

aluminum bat propped and sun-dazzledon his shoulder, eyes blindfoldedby the cap's shadow. And her blouse

flayed open, my hands, her lavenderbra, my hands. Married and her husbandsomewhere over the Mediterranean,

eyes on a magazine or shut, the plane'soval windows tinted with evening.And the dark waves below.

And the quick bottlenose dolphinssashaying in the water, the frequencyof their clicks disrupting the sonar.

Windchill

And scarves wound around our throats,hands lost in the darkness of gloves.

We understood the idea of cold, but not this.What a gust does to our bodies: bones

molded from snow. Last week's newspaperglistening on the sidewalk, sheathed

in ice. What happened to the world then?Another kidnapping. Another explosion

at a café, the swarm of glass. A stingingon our cheeks, this windchill makes you

think only of Now. We tip our headsand plow through the city with the others,

the ghosts of our breathing made visiblebefore wind lifts them from our mouths.

Road Trip

A car detonates and your television flattensthe aftermath, a car that is not a car anymorebut the mouth of a crater. Bodies too, bodiesonce upright with breath in their mouths.A car detonates on Tuesday, on Wednesday, two days later a car detonates and bodiesflattened under concrete, crimson marblingthe road. Spring to summer and cars to not-cars,breaths to not-breaths, to blood in the mouths.Car on the road and you behind the wheel,a song in your mouth. The song is greenand goes out the window where the horizonis flattened. Your car goes and the songgoes and summer hammers down its heat,sun on your windshield and the constellationof insects flattened by speed. No televisionor news reels. Just song and highways,just landscape. A hawk in the dusk-lighthovering seven stories above the crimson earth.