How could I know when I came to the inter-
section of Heaven and Highway 7
that a driver wearing nothing
but green-black pyjama bottoms would pull out
in front of me in a black Cadillac
convertible with the top open. I signaled
to turn right at the 7-Eleven south of the inter-
section of Highway 7 and Heaven; I signaled
but then this voice from the wilder days cried
hey baby let me buy you a last syringe,
his bloodshot eyes going to bed with my bones
on that lonely Ontario hard-top.
We were sniffing the bee balm then,
doing the beebop on that cracked black-
top when the sirens came on
and this voice said hey baby they’re playing
our song. I saw myself burning
out across the inter-
section of Heaven and Highway 7
and I remember thinking the clouds
looked like ambulance attendants
floating over me wearing green-black
pyjama bottoms, blacker than grief
on television, greener than my love’s
tourmaline shirt studs.
So it is when you dream
your soul in flight, the angels
becoming attendants in green cowboy shirts
unbuttoned to show the hurting black
hair on their bodies. The driver
has sped off up Heaven toward the 7-Eleven
you know now you won’t ever reach, not
in this life, maybe never. Not even the kids
kicking dust on the corner saw him go,
not one witness on the eleven o’clock television.
Nobody remembers the stoplights going out,
one by one, all over the world, or the driver
greener than a hangover in his talk show coffin
blacker than the scars on a serial killer
conscience, cruising through the intersection
strewn with smoking bodies, drunk and careening
over the white lines of the bloodied
PED-XING, chanting burn baby burn in flame-
retardant green-black pyjama bottoms.
Originally published in Cider Press Review, Volume 1.
