The long road south, the pavement flat
and black as a dash without end, no signs,

no houses, the heat like an unseen fog
and the sun a swollen crimson clot

above fields where frazzle-haired palm trees rose
sporadic and unwieldy, the miles

of pasture where cattle of every conceivable
color, rust and tobacco and ashen, fed

and nursed their stumbling young,
heavy heads bent to the ground.

And insects that crashed against windshield
so tiny, no body was left behind.

Then a wooden shack where we stopped to pee
and the shock of iron-red flecks against

bowl, the water placid, unmoved.
There was hardly any pain.

What could we do but continue on
as scattered street-lamps gradually revealed

a landscape inhabited once again: the still
shuttered windows of bungalows pink

as scrubbed flesh, the small dark yards of abandoned
Bigwheels and plots of petunias or cukes,

the closed, expectant mailboxes
and the living already dead inside me.