(Little Dixie Highway) We stop along the Mississippi and walk down to a yellowish limestone monument dedicated to the flood relief volunteers of 1973. There are two hashmarks on the stone indicating the height of the floodwaters to have been over five feet. We climb up on the stone and sit, watching a family fish down along the bank of the mighty river. The man has a long line of purple monofilament wrapped around a Coke bottle which he keeps tugging and coiling while the woman fishes with a cheap, light spinning rod-the kind you can buy at Walgreens or Kmart. The kids dance up and down the shoreline throwing sticks and laughing wildly while their parents work with grim hard-set faces. They are obviously not fishing for pleasure. The woman almost lands what looks like an ugly pink carp but it pops off her line just as she drags it out of the water. She makes a dash for it but she's grossly out of shape and the fish escapes. She throws her arms up and turns to her husband, appealing for sympathy but he's got his hands full hauling in an even bigger and uglier carp. It splashes around in the shallows with its sucker mouth pumping for air and its big eye staring at the bright world. The woman makes a mad dash for the fish while her husband keeps tension on the line with the Coke bottle. She keeps trying to seize the carp by the neck but it squirms loose and flops back into the water. One of the kids runs up to his mother and hands her a long plank board which she grabs and proceeds to bash the fish over the head with, causing the line to break. The carp swims lazily off back into the black waters of the Mississippi with the kids chasing after it laughing hysterically. The man throws his hands up but makes no sound and starts wrapping the Coke bottle again with the slack line. The woman shrugs her shoulders and returns to her spinning reel; casts the heavy treble hook out far and hands the pole to her daughter. The man just stares off across the wide water. They've grown accustomed to bitter disappointment.

We ate together in small dark cafes lit by strings of electric chiles, facing out to the poor street; ribby dogs dodging handmade explosive motor scooters. Great smell of frying tortillas.

We strolled together down the white long beach past turtle eggs that hadn't hatched, pink plastic doll arms faded in the blazing sun, barnacled spike high heels washed in from Cuba or some distant pleasure ship.

We swam together in the green sea, rain beating us in the face, arms wide open to the tall black column cloud, her broad Midwestern smile.

Where are we now?

The Head Reflects

It's too bad but had I been whole; had I not been completely cut off as I was-as he found me in the ditch-we might have become great pals. Who knows? There seemed to be some immediate affinity there. But then again, I wasn't looking for friendship. My situation didn't allow it. A beast of burden was all I needed. Sad to say. That was it. Someone to simply get me from here to there. Selfish. Yes. But this was a desperate predicament I found myself in. A predicament I could have no more foreseen than one can name the date and place of one's death. Nights, I'd stare up at the sea of sky, searching for some sign in the heavens, some omen maybe. But from my odd position sunk deep in the ditch, only shards of galaxies revealed themselves: Tail of Scorpio. Leg of Pegasus. Orion's familiar belt. Nothing whole and clear, telling a story in three parts. Nothing so neat as that. Just fragments falling. Shooting stars. Satellites methodically tracking their looped orbits. Even sounds seemed broken and cut off from their source. Ducks winging in the dark with no destination. The whipping of wings. Opossum crashing blindly in the brush. For what? Once, a brindle bitch came by and sniffed at my severed neck then licked both my eyes but trotted off without so much as a nibble. Searching for fresher meat, I suppose. It wasn't the aloneness that gnawed away at me so much as the limbo. Not knowing where I'd wind up. Some orange Dumpster headed for the Ozarks maybe. It was right about then that the frail thought of friendship visited me in the ditch. I could feel it scratching around deep in the place where my chest used to be. The absence of a body is not something you get used to right away.

Bernalillo

In the summer of 1984, my father was killed in a small New Mexican town where the wide dusty streets are sunk three feet below modern sidewalk level. At the turn of the twentieth century this piece of city planning was designed to protect women in full skirts from the torrents of red mud cast up by buckboards and mules. Stumbling backwards out of the Cibola bar, my father tumbled off one of these high curbs directly into the path of an oncoming El Camino with neon blue lights silhouetting the lowered chassis. The anonymous driver never stopped. The bartender called the Albuquerque ambulance. When they loaded my father's mangled body on the gurney they asked him if he knew his name. "Just Sam," he said and then died right away. Ever since then I've had a stark terror of being blindsided by cars.

we sat around in rosy candlelight

exchanging tales of riptides

swimming too far out toward the reef

towed away in panic

underwater nightmares

breathless women

leaping off the fishing boat to take a leak

two hundred feet

of black Caribbean

straight down

all the while monster waves

crashing

just outside

green screens

white little crabs

frozen

poised sentinels

beside their tiny holes

translucent claws

raised to the salty air

and the razor-thin slice

of moon

just hanging there

Black Oath

I understand you've made giant strides toward your rehabilitation.

Who told you that?

I've heard it through the grapevine.

That's a song.

Well- Did they say I'd repented? Down on my knees? Taken the oath?

They said you were behaving yourself.

That's nice.