i. You are lying in a bed with no sheets and you are convinced your friends' parents are alcoholics. You are convinced that your entire life has been woven of slimy, sloppy lies and half truths. And you are convinced that you are a werewolf.

ii. At the chili cook-off two years ago you were wearing red flannel and a bandit hat and you were watching your entire home town get wasted, looking at you like a museum. You are convinced that you have been lied to.

iii. It was a full moon and you wanted to tear your clothes off. Except for the bellbottoms which you wanted to carefully hang up with a finicky crease for next time.

iv. You notice that down the street the Hy-** has closed and you are unsure how to proceed because you know that normal people do not get upset about such trivial things as midnight blue pies and insomniac coffee. You want to sob, but people will talk.

v. You are convinced you are a werewolf and you have been lied to. Everyone is smoking around you and you want only to make it stop. This is where your mother grew up. You say nothing.

vi. Drinks seem to appear in your hands, unsolicited. You have forgotten your ID, but everyone knows you from the papers anyway, everyone knows your family and they sort of apologize for spilling beer on your boots. Sort of.

vii. You crave pies at midnight and this is a "beautiful city" with a square that does not quit and causes quite a few accidents. This is a "beautiful city" filled with people who will never get over the high school quarterback, people who will never admit they have a problem with Stag, though the cans lie all around you.

viii. You are a werewolf and you are convinced you have been lied to about alcoholism. You are upset about the Hy-**, more so than you should be. If you took off your flannel now, you would never be able to get your heart back in your chest and Belleville would laugh itself to sleep.

In the fall there were two of them. Wild animals, I mean. New driver's licenses of shiny, longways plastic and long limbs that hadn't filled out yet. She was filling out her Freeburg High School T-shirt pretty well he thought. He was taking it off her innocent body in the parking lot. After the lights at the football field shut off and she kept drawing monstrous hearts on the fogged up windows in the back seat of a car it was almost as if she could let it all go. Hardly thinking about him at all as his hand slid under her waistband and she woke up as he was fumbling with a ****** wrapper. How awkward, she thought, to be a teenage boy with a ***** how tragic, not knowing how to handle a latex balloon when you have it. Like the Hindenburg, she thought we're both going to die some day so it might as well be an explosion and I might as well put on a show for it. She could feel his heart beat in his ***** the way that nobody talks about it and she laughed a little at their nakedness and it was tinny in the climate of their hot breath. I love you, she said.

As if it would change anything anyway.

There's new grass
Growing where the Bear
Laid in state interspersed
With fine chaining dandylions
And quick cutting ramps
Lou's wool socks hang
To dry on the porch, the
Color of her

If I asked nicely, the sun
Would not quit today
Pulling up green shoots from
Her death bed
Yesterday was fodder
Yesterday was mama crying
At the close of another time
The wind pulling my hair and
Telling me secrets

Nature is gentle
A pillow of birth
Where the Bear
Laid in state

See?

*all things are new

"I LOVE LOVE!" She shouted, speaking to herself in third person.
It was then that she seemed to float away
A balloon on Macy's Day.

It seemed I was the only one orbiting earth,
watching those performances of daily life applauding
for a well-flipped omelet a superbly
fitted glove a full tank of gas at $4.00.
I couldn't believe my luck

Terrestrially, there were husks sipping coffee
and rasping and rustling at each other
desiccated.
Privately, she was buying real estate on the moon
I LOVE LOVE! she shouted
Dancing like an egg on a spray of water
a declassified military satellite who through some dumb luck
had escaped the pull of gravity and won
Marveling at the moon rock
on her finger, even a stubbed toe just seemed
like the ideal opportunity for extorting kisses.
And it glinted in the light.
Everything was fine.

Down on earth it seemed all the wine drinkers
were toasting to us cheering as we terra formed
the moon. *We couldn't believe our luck
as we rolled back our stone.