The walls bent down to rest their viny bangs
on the sidewalks’ spasms, fault-lines running
straight-edged through a metamorphosis of
pebbles. Those not anchored in paralysis
threw themselves from windows, the windows
threw themselves from houses, and the houses
sighed and lay down, pillowing the night sky
with dust. In the darkness death was giving birth.
I cried mercy for my tumble down the coal shaft,
leaving the city behind. To tremble, feeling
forgotten, though instantly ringed with courtship,
persistent stalkers flushed from hedgerows into
the open, drawn by vacuum, the sudden absence
of fetish tickling their nostrils with the scent of blood.