Buzzed head
razor-to-scalp kind of thing
springing out the sun window
splitting traffic air in half
when we passed the women in
clunky heels on each precious
bus stop corner.

Swordfish. Needle head. Carrick’s dead.
I go back to dreaming dead in a car.
He Sucked a lung full of polluted wind in his mouth
like a poor person’s mason jar while standing
breathlessly screaming
‘it smells like cigarettes and garbage.
I Miss This Home’. He says
over and over.

In my dad’s black suburban
our skulls
bounce against the window repetitively,
eager to get a taste of that trash.

The car pained to a stop
my forehead smearing against the finger-smudged fog
glass as street lights painted my body gold

before I lost sight of the boy.
I watched the buzzed scalp of his
and baggy black clothes dissolve into
sharp bushes dead mulberries
city steps melted by Pittsburgh salt
and the street lights I thought
only God changed when we slept
with unlocked doors.

The next time I see the boy
emerge from the
throat of the city steps
he’ll be lost and red eyed,
ribs broken with
his pupils and iris crawling
back inside his hollow head.

Carrick Boy. Smoke-cologne
wrinkled clothes
dirty pockets n big ugly cursive tattoos
creep back into my basement
where he resides
shooting at a cracked screen,
kicking empty pill bottles away from his ankles
pale from last night’s street lights.