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)