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Call me black ice —
when you see me,
call me the place you skid.

Call me shadow’s fragrance,
named for the way
a bad night stings you raw for days.

Call me water on granite,
wearing you down over time.
Think of me as a sink full of bones
and greasy teacups.
When you come up for air,
slimed in old blood
and rotting greens, I’ll be
your horror.

Call me the technology
of ultimate sleep.
Make me
responsible for
the deaths of Herculaneum
and Pompeii,
finger me for the one who guided
the sulfur rain
and even flow of
death’s mud
over Vesuvius’ flanks.

No matter
what you call me,
I will look back at you
and say:

yes,
I am that,
I am the thing
I am labeled.

You’ll shine
more
that way.

There’s a hole in me the size of a departing flight.
Something taxis up to the edge and takes off, flying out of me toward a horizon.

(It’s not that I can see any horizon; I just know that’s
what planes fly into. It used to be the wild blue yonder that planes

flew into, but no one thinks planes are that wild anymore — they seem to us
more like stale buses full of cranky people eating meals that don’t

fill them, much the same way that nothing fills me now.)
I keep thinking, even after my mind falls into the hole in me and disappears,

that I’m going to rise and follow that vapor trail into the blush,
catch up to the flight before the sun goes down;

you’d think I’d know better by now,
I ought to know better by now,

I ought to be able
to figure this one out.