"David ‘Ronnie’ Pierce was on his way home from an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting when he was hit by a drunk driver, his best friend Eliot Hightower. Two days later, Pierce was dead."

1

Drinking alcohol had eaten Hightower and Ronnie’s throats

from shirley temple sopranos to warm whiskey baritones

the accident is anti-anemic not against simply opposite

when the two men open their mouths they open screams in blankets.

2

3

The two black stripes not shadows of street lights but two slits of eyes closed on a line. trees in a lined boulevard planted and god took over after that is what Hightower said, told him his story, a broken man in broken soil. ‘plant seeds and watch the garden grow.’ when cars collide yellow seeded helicopters chop into the ashpalt and the grass. pieces of window glass geyser out of hoods, pierce the skin of leaves, the skin of leaving.

4

She was behind his seat, blocked out of identification by film grain.

Old like him she carried iron in her blood in his Camry touching travelling steel above a window. the officer will say all she did was look at me. all she did was have blood on her face and say you were a child too you were we are

5

"Don’t take my picture I don’t care for what paper.

Fuckin bastard. yeah so are you. So’s everybody.

Fine, I’ll talk about that son of a bitch.

We’d shoot our eyes at nylons and the neons

and turn leather inside out. Colliding his head

against bottles. Never owned much

but he owned music. Played it in his Camry all day.

Bastard. He was like so many of us in town:

when we have too much

we get the uncontrollable desire to lay down."