CINEMATOXIC

Lightening behind the old drive in screen

creases the clouds into some cheap countertop.

We take popcorn and old beer and sit

on top of a school bus. It will rain soon

but the air is cooled by that. Looking

at the screen you explain how the muscles

should tighten when they dry out, eventually

they wont be able to move them. Perhaps

that explains the blood lust. The wind across

the parking lot lifts out hair like heat

from a fire. If you put your hand out

it you can split the air up around you.

When I was eight, they moved the bodies

from the graveyard, then let the grass grow

so you couldn’t even see the stones. One day

we found a clearing in the lea of a stone

where a deer had made its bed. We threw

firecrackers at the stone splattering

white rock with burn marks. Then the grass

caught fire and the whole field was like

hell and then everything was just scorched.

That summer the drive in went all Adult

then didn’t reopen with the thaw.

Here, these black speaker boxes mark

the broken field like crosses, the blank screen

our lake of fire, the flickering

plays moving bodies in the dark tree line.

The rain will come down and soften hard

things, ease the crust of pavement,

un-ratchet the ligament to bones.