Invisible Dan drove the car, a green Volkswagen Jetta that hurtled along I-80 in the middle of the night. We’d just coaxed him into fifth gear—he’d never driven a stick before—and now allowed ourselves to drowse, drifting on the edge of sleep as we whisked through central Pennsylvania. The Promised Land was still two hundred miles away. Columbus, Columbus, Columbus. Was there a word more beautiful in all the language than this one, which bespoke whole worlds of firstness, freshness, discovery? Westward we flew, as the word made a rosary under my breath, the engine’s hum and the seat’s vibration lulling me deeper. Then a truck slid past on the left and Dan panicked. He ground the gearbox and stomped on the brake.

A space, a square –
you rearrange my skin with one hand,
complicating the gesture while simplifying my frame.
A space, a square where time has been cancelled,
stripped of its original function.
The interim?

I am covered in earth,
pacing the Lake Isabella shoreline
in a bell-shaped curve, an empty trajectory.
There’s a group of us and the consensus is that
they taste disgusting and when the nausea hits
you know they’re working, but
I think they taste like chocolate and chalk
and I’m not feeling nausea as much as machismo.

It’s the eve of prosperity’s hiatus
Wolves in dark suits
Circle in search
Of an open sore

A hand beckons from a coffin
the brain slams into a bottle,
bloodshot flooding the eye
you stagger away
wearing a sign that reads
don’t give up on me.