Thomas Carrigan
I drive the drive along the Muscoot Reservoir
for about the three thousandth time, early sun
angling through the treeline, skipping loops
onto the water, the reflection hurting my eyes.
As the radio starts to spatter and crack
the way it does in this spot every day, I steer
one-handed and feel for a dropped cigarette
along the nubby carpet, torn by two goals—
one above and one below, the way bonobos
eat while copulating. It must be like this, America,
rubbing the head of Henry Kissinger and hoping for peace,
his twitching eyes the color of fish bait. I stutter
through an intersection that gives and takes. Caution,
as if from an eye-dropper, blinking us in and blinking
us out. An access road traces a waist around the shore,
and I want to pick through its milkweed, burdock, and fuzz,
to light up in one of the dinghies at the water's edge.
I want the smoke to split my sternum, to love and activate
my lungs. I want to spend them like found money
and blow smoke rings into mist. My car seat
whispers like valium, wrapping itself around me,
but I steer toward the guardrail at the edge of the future,
to rub and thrum my heart against it, to test its metal
until it fills the air like a steel viola.