A kid said you could chew road tar

if you got it before it cooled,

black globule with a just-forming skin.

He said it was better than cigarettes.

He said he had a taste for it.



On the same road, a squirrel

was doing the Watusi to free itself

from its crushed hindquarters.

A man on a bicycle stomped on its head,

then wiped his shoe on the grass.



It was autumn, the adult word for fall.

In school we saw a film called Reproduction.

The little snake-father poked his head

into the slippery future,

and a girl with a burned tongue was conceived.