Whiteout
A winter
storm lingers like a hooker
on the
corner. Darkens homes, disrupts
travel. Random streets glow, glazed
with
streetlamps’ golden haze. Quilts
of wet snow
mute cars into humps,
power
failures stain windows.
The jaundice tinged trees’ branchy
tentacles, bearing the weight of
snowflake
mutilated into bank of scar tissue, conjures
Dirk Fuchs’ ninety-five million-year-old
ultraviolet Octopus vulgaris.
One man was killed
by a falling
snow-laden
bough in Central Park
but the real
threat: that strong wind will
create blizzard
conditions; it already spread
a fire that
glitched from an ocean-
front hotel
into a games arcade.
The delicate construction
of the octopod’s antiquated fossil—
a film upon the seafloor
like toothpaste scum drying on the sink
edge
or a sculpture of a sneeze—
the whore leans into the cracked
window of a sedan,
then gets in the front seat,
unzips the paleobiologist’s starched
pants.
Fetches from
the gaping
dark the
planted squid & milks
it, warm,
glowing udder,
invisible
ink, muffled mantra,
fascination
& discovery, but behind the eyes
a fury of
flurries, cold thoughts.
