Chipping nails,
shards of hardened skin
and turquois on silver,  her hand
attached to a paperback permeating of rotting corpses and wilted flowers among

washed up license plates scuffed by sea glass,
once a bottle of a failed enlightened and darkened drunk,   I am sure of it.
You drool, salvia skulking your chin—
loose fingers drop the rain-soaked umbrella
and
I’m drenched in water, I sail down the street, on an arc brimmed with mammals
and arachnids; six of the spiders, two of the dog.

I spit out and profess the skin once clung to my lips, I see the layers,

out here, two dogs prance around the field, tripping over each other
as six spiders creep and crawl under us, slithering
one lands

on my sweater in the classroom,
         I squish it dead,
with the heel of my hand. Usually, I’d scream.
Instead, I took the power to make something alive—something dead.
Fog-Horn Leg-Horn, “and then-and then, I say-I say” kills you,

wadding you beneath the cooped-up coop,
Swiper Swipes No More.