A coiled overcast moves in: cloud-
cover the color of spoiled orchids,
my body tipping ionized & porous.
Beneath the low-slung undarkening
of wind, the backside of some strip
mall, beside commercial dumpsters,
some vagrant feeds his vein a needle.
Star-thistle spiders on the chainlinks;
cholla humps in chiaroscuro & grist
quicksilvers with the dusk in corners.
Puddles rump with mulm & scumble.
Big rigs swoosh the highway: a noise
that velvets on my teeth. A grackle
feasts amidst hot rubbish. Scratch-
off tickets gash & fester. Pink buds
of beavertail catch fussbudget orts
& rinds aflutter. Cacti drip a sticky
succus. Ashcan drymouth phantom
pain: the junkie’s grout-sunk eyelids
flicker, exposing whites. He hunkers
up against a wall, a punk enveloped
within a frozen seasick fever-dream.
I pluck the brainstuff of a silver hair,
kinked & crooked. It’s just bad luck
that greets me. Late summer rots into
a hypnotist decked out in rags. Look,
each swish little leaf goes maggoting.
Drop-dead mouse turds beckon me
to shoplift again. I fondle my mole.
I rub a blister. If these are blessings,
may I rest among them. When sky
looks wrecked, bliss crashes down.
I’m glistered in cold ecstasy of rain.
Will Cordeiro has published work in 32 Poems, AGNI, Bennington Review, Best New Poets, Copper Nickel, Pleiades, and The Threepenny Review. Will authored Trap Street (Able Muse, 2021) and Whispering Gallery (DUMBO Press, forthcoming 2024) and co-authored Experimental Writing: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2024). Will received an MFA and Ph.D. from Cornell University. Will co-edits Eggtooth Editions and lives in Guadalajara, Mexico.