Gulf Coast
"Heck," I said, hallucinogenic in Texas City, Texas,
a whistle stop like many days without sleep, the vapory, striated air
combustible and wobbly, the sheen of refined fuel dizzying.
God knows what awfulness-on-the-earth all-told
the colossal, flaring lean-to's on the edge of town were home to.
We ate fried oysters and cole slaw. Our glasses of beer stood yay tall.
Passersby in the windowpane wore expressions
like those on the faces in abnormal psychology texts,
eyes blackened for anonymity but not reprieve from their distress.
They walked around as if undressed.
We sat undermined by substances. The tape loop of my blood
spun. I saw through my closed eyelids
afterimages of Heimlich charts, opened them and read
a government-issue poster: WHAT TO DO IN CASE OF CHEMICAL
interrupted by her pale, halter-topped bare shoulder,
in which I more sensed than saw the entourage of atoms
shimmying on their hinges. Some outsized cloud of toxic gases
any moment might have risen like a drastic jellyfish.
I said, "Heck." We paid the bill and took our chances. Many ambulances
hurried through the sun's last, almost acrobatic light. At the motel,
atoms did their rope tricks. Hands and knees in the bathroom, eyes
inches from the tile, I whispered, "Look here."
(originally appeared in Quarterly West)
