She steps outside the bounds of the security camera.

Grey-stuccoed walls contract behind her.

Glass arrows compressed from the rotating doors.

 

A leash of chrome lunges toward her disappearing back

too late

 

She is already over the street’s hump.

The Bay winks at the bottom, fluke up to mauve sky.

Her legs churn warm pavement, bitumen remembers

 

mammoth bones liver collapse reptile teeth marks glom

red rubber soles

 

The street descends steeply.

Creepers dart from shuttered shop windows,

night-flowering orchid bats jab into her nostrils,

 

green dog shit children, fly buzzes her naked shin.

Rusty spokes slalom

 

The embarkment pools around her like a suede skirt.

Beyond, ghost ships hulk in the channel.

Thin oil layers salt water into sinus waves.

 

Fish stink roils up her arms. Lodges a translucent scale

where her toes

 

burst free the sandal

so tender membrane

 

She steps onto the harbor’s mirror.

Heel-first, she slips into the bardo of salt.

Depth rushes her hair follicles into contraction.

 

Sound tugs forward, mouth sucks her beyond

the red bridge.

 

White shadows cruise at the far edges of sight.

Below bend last violet rays into crust, the black.

Submarine bubble streaks her with lumen lance.

 

Sediment soft opens basement, doors to

forgotten chambers.

 

Eyeless choir keens into silicon heat.

A judgement of gelatinous weave holds her tight.

Her brain streams amino acids, pressure curves

 

Horsetail branches purple, a diode sinks beyond,

they fall. All fall.

 

 

 

 

 

Her spine, now

pulses

 

choir

rears