[Tonight You Are Barefoot in LA]

Tonight you are barefoot in LA, and you hope you are dreaming. You hope you are dreaming because you are naked and nobody is stopping to look at you. You hope you are dreaming because you can’t feel your skin melting on the asphalt. You are trying so hard to say something to anyone. You are trying. You are burning. You are balanced impossibly on your own ankle bones, no one stopping to steady you. You almost thank God when you realize they all have no eyes. When you wake, because surely you’ll wake, you’ll have no legs at all, and people will see you. When you wake, because surely you’ll wake, they’ll all look, and they’ll help this time. This time they’ll help. This time they’ll. Please. Please wake up.

 

[Tonight You Are a Confused Werewolf]

Tonight you are a confused werewolf howling at the sun. Your too-human lips purse, project inadequacy at a pitch that carries for yards instead of miles. Neighborhood dogs don’t fear you. The neighbors themselves are making phone calls behind closed doors. You hear sirens later than you’d like, can’t lope fast enough after or away from them. A man in a uniform barks at you. Twelve hours either direction and his innards would be your feast. As it stands, the only blood you can smell is your own.

 

[Tonight You Are Building Something]

Tonight you are building something but you don’t know what it is. You are in a workshop owned by all the men in your family. That doesn’t make sense. That doesn’t make it not true. You grip a board and spiders come scrambling over the edge and meld into your hands. Hundreds of spiders pulse under your skin. You shake and shake, but they’re in you. What were you building that this happened. What terrible things will you create with hands like these.

 

[Tonight You Are Bound in the Backwoods]

Tonight you are bound in the backwoods. You remember having the wrong bumper sticker but you don’t know what it was. You are hog-tied, cloth-tied in the back of a truck. You can’t see, but you hear them talking about the price of corn. You are being driven somewhere, and you can’t tell how long the drive takes. The truck sputters to a stop. Doors open and slam. The tailgate creaks, they jump up, you’re hefted and tossed. You break every bone in your body when you hit the ground. You hear them digging a hole, and one of them keeps intoning knee high, Fourth of July. They toss you in, and all your healed bones re-break. Dirt hits your back. You are buried, and you will sprout nevermore. You are planted, and you will rot like your grandfather’s barn.