Paper chalice a wasp worries to the heart
of the patio junk-sculpture dog’s
metal pipe torso: Thurston’s lava tube
in miniature, refuge the long night
against which children are issued
soft caps, weak flashlights embedded
Cyclopsian at the third eye, hands free for
the inevitable stumbling. . . .
My eyes snagged on a man’s upper lip. It was a thin lip but an expressive one. You expected those lips to speak a Romance language. And then the man spoke with the flat Midwestern voice of any of us. “You must be Natalie,” he said.
Night screech—Startle, the heart-race after a human / scream. Then silence and only suspicion of / a crime. Perhaps a rabbit has flown off with an owl.