little red strip mall

Tell me it’s getting late.

Know, please. Don’t look, just know.

We’re at the bottom of a

pool or in an aged motel—

A rock or your little finger skips across

Yellowed walls and bodies 

itch or buzz fluorescent. People forget,

everything lingers turquoise.

I know a guy who won’t shut up about 

frequencies–says that colors are withering or

corroding like plants or

knives in a stuffy

kitchen. Blames air conditioning and

the internet. Soon, there will be no pigments.

Thick glass panes bake bare bodies blind.

There is a wooden palm tree in the center

of their courtyard, stalling, stahling, stealing, stilling.

I hate it.

All palm trees are wooden, but this one didn’t grow.

They painted it and put it in a truck or van. How did they

get that shade of brown?

There shouldn’t be any left.

Or maybe nobody tells the truth these 

days and No-Bodies lie to live. You don’t use too much blush.

The tone is not lost on me.

Flat panels, cut into logarithmic functions,

washed in green-winged teal, tied or locked neatly on a bone white I-beam.

It’s been bent to look

like it belongs.

That putrid thing.