SINKERS

I said, 'Who's that woman coming this way?' and he said, 'I don't know who she is but I'm going to kill her' and then he makes little boats with his eyes all lashed up-like and to a dock and they're floating on dark water, just bobbing up and down, waiting for more water; just little boats making war, making traffic with the earth, filling up the world's ears with their mournful sounds, and really intending it. Intending on killing this woman walking toward us under the bridge and away from the men at the waterfront. We sink into the stone of the bridge like we've learned to sink into the stone of things before, placing our backs deeper and deeper into shadow, waiting for our shadows to fumble over each other. Then, in my head, the structure of the thing sinking into a lake and the material of it crumbling down to where we put our backs down into a deeper darker wall but made of mud and of the very bottom.