B. T. Shaw

In the hatchback. The forerunner
parked in the sedge past the gore.
Pressed against live oak. The edge.
Unfinished wallboard.

Around the bend on Gumbranch
Road, under the stands where
the high-school kids smoke.

Past curfew. Archie's Nite Club.
The point of knowing where
one ends, another begins.
In the crux

the climber dynos

as though the body
doesn't come down
to five pounds of ash
and a bathtub of spit.

Half-second hang—

illusion of perpetual blue,
dilated expanse before grasping
what's come undone unglued felled
wild and through as though nothing
is beneath you.