The Girl Offers up Her Resignation
Like the throat of a deer arched back, truck struck, fit for the jaws of a tiger but set instead for this mediocrity— guard rail and gravel, a grocery bag kiting high. Hell, even the workers paid to pick her body off the interstate are on furlough, so she’ll be there today the same as tomorrow, and in my sorrow or is it conceit I think it is only me to notice, to nod yes, baby. Don’t I know it, your neck, her neck—bone white, no note to play without the string attached but still touchable, wanting to be touched, or at least I want to press that silent piano key, that soft blanch of exotic tusk and tooth, that pelt cooled to zero and colored the illegal bone white of antique billiard balls and dominoes, but instead I keep driving, talking to myself as if I were talking to her. But don’t we all keep driving? Isn’t it dangerous to stop? What we don’t want to see is that glass-eyed reply— not a fuck all but an oh well, the sigh of each car passing by.