after Agent Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks

As the wet asphalt of Agent Cooper’s

gelled back hair, Bobby’s motor oil spill of a mane.

James Hurley’s leather jacket, cracked

with road dust, buttered with the pink salt

of Laura Palmer’s perspiration. As Ronnette’s ratio

of swollen pupil to iris, mountain tunnel

barreling down the railroad track. As the melody of Laura’s

last words laid to unrest in Josie Packard’s

history, tarred as split asphalt. As the night war

the fox hears the rabbit screaming. it is a terrible thing, twist of a knife, portrait of a throat on fire.

what is it like to be god? to be cinder blooded? to weave dreams into nightmares? be the thing that goes bump in the night?

it is hysteria. it is black roses and ash-burnt lungs. it is beating the wind with raven wings, stirring skies into phantoms and moonlight into tricks. it is crumpled paper in a fire, disintegrating, as if it never was.