Driving Past Logan County

Underneath piling gray slush,
ice seals the road like glass,
an unopened window to death
spilling out to kiss

the shallow tread of my tires,
which meet the ice with no restraint
in the way their unconscious spinning
has spun the world

that blurs past my spiraling car
as I realize the perverse turn
from its forward progression
to twisted disregard

of the steering wheel I grip,
a faulty control on my life,
that, when I pull to set it straight,
only drifts out further

into a memory of your flushed neck
pulsing chaos against my cheek
as I gently squeezed your upper arm
and heard your laugh

as though you were beside me now
alternating both your hands
to turn the steering wheel faster
and drive circles

into snow-covered parking lots
until I'd laugh and squeal,
"Enough, Brian! Stop the car!"
and you'd finally slow down.

Star Death

I had never seen myself until I saw you—

burnt copper hair curling against your parchment skin,

ice-gray eyes observing me from your infinitely distant,
isolated self. I was an anomaly shining

from the deep space of our world

and floating before your telescope vision,

laughing and twisting my hair over high shoulders

before turning from the sun into my own shadow.

I turned to you.  Whispering under the low hum

of an airplane engine, I felt my harshly painted colors

seeping out of me, sucked slowly into the gravity

of your empathetic black hole.

I had become only the choice:

to inhale the power of others

or to pull them through me,

to push them to the other side
transformed.