I knocked backwards—after the sheets,
half benzoate-mugwort and Pacifico and terpene nepetalactone
and remembered
in the highwater heat-waves east
of Bakersfield, ranchers
had lynched a gazelle. Ribcages,
tailbones, horn, powder-marrow, three-piece
suit tatters pitchforked the Impala’s hood. I sat
vigil for a packet of tarots, scotch-taped
together, a conch pendant grafted to
Sonoran ruby swinging down
against her ignition keys. Zephyrus draws
and locks open
her Hi-Power slide—a Hanged Man—her free paw creasing
Westin’s brow, the denim San Quentin
embroidery, his pellet-Vaseline singed
hands. The warden’s Fieldmaster laid
on his knees, chalk and twelve-gauge
particulate dribbling, drooling across vinyl
upholstery. My staff quivers. Articulate
diaspora, she and I were. Outside the cities
there were men who hated us. Hated
and struck and made jerky from and kissed us. Tangled
in the Venetian blinds and mounds of coca he
knew and without his spectacles he
acquiesced. To be a proxy. Maybe that’s why
he spat away my palm reading. Maybe it’s why he stood,
pleaded the fifth. Accepted one of her twenties. Maybe it's why at the lip
of the desert basin on the highway to Baja and the next
enclave and the painted stone under which laid her dead
brother’s submachine gun,
where she waded down into silt and he finally drew
out the vault—we all sat, wolfing
fried baloney and cool Topo Chicos behind
a mothballed Chevron. Break, break. Lean forwards, into chrome,
ruined cedar—a acetate projection of a spinal cord,
lemongrass patchouli, all his frameworks…sunburn, profit margins,
draping mink.
“You slick bastard. You mangy
puss,” he murmured, meeting Zephyrus's gaze
—myopic—“spitting image of
him. The minute my podmates came
free of those watchtowers, you tucked
tail.1 Gassed your rearview and watched
them hop and try to shrug it off until the CS
fumes blazed and zapped out all their goddamn
wind.”