Before you get to the 101,
there’s a cut-off –
A road like a spliced limb,
frayed denim kitchen zipper
pointing south:
we went down fly,
not to Lakeport, but –
Bodies and roads alike are halved
as messily as overripe tomatoes.
Coloring outside the lines,
bleeding over the clean incision,
a cutting board long-scarred
like the Hollywood Freeway
and its delusions of symmetry.
(Even what is coarse
like an old pair of jeans ends in
spindly soft threads dangling
across freshly shaven thighs,
smooth fingernails digging
into a man's stubble, even Venice Beach
with its tattoo artists and grit
turns warm sand,
meddling between toes,
invading covert seams.)
