[-empyre-] start of july......directions

[Angela Ferraiolo]

> 1. With the brakes chewed, their front axel pops over the planters. And with a spooling swerve they crash their van past the front porch into a mud thatched oak. (JN)
>
> 2. "Now its your turn," Whistler laughs. "I think she's good for one more." The way his left eye bulged still bothers Denim, but he knows better than to say anything, especially when Whistler is in this kind of mood. (AK)
>
> 3. But they were car poor. Such high tops, as in shoes. Not Whistler's shoes as he is shoe rich. Jeans as names and the birds, those moody fear mongers, can lift the trees, such bark heavy alarms. (JN)

4. the van's headlights screened by the mud from the oak their
electric light washing over the walk the porch the house itself unlit
empty the street almost stubbornly dark the moon divided the stars
fracturing in the now cracked glass of the van's windshield their
reflection faintly lighting shards of glass splinters of the front
porch the cracked pottery of the ruined planters suburbia's uniform
order cancelled now like a series of bad checks until finally the
headlights went out too a door down the street opening and then
slamming not followed by footsteps but only by a more complete silence
the night pushing on Whistler beginning to perceive the low rush of
air entering and leaving his lungs the silhouette of Denim's face a
distant curve that slid lower as Whistler strained to lift his head by
degrees by inches forward skyward up causing the moon to scatter
deliriously across the crazed glass stretching dilating revolving and
then inverting again as incapable Whistler fell back staring into
shadow unable to quit listening to the now flat growing unbearable
silence of the night where he could sense an approach of some kind of
outcome indifferent unnameable yet as certain as dawn and he thought
(af)