She looked out across the water, her head tipped and her eyes narrowed.  All she could see were tight crests, one after another, small collapsing pyramids of slate gray water pitching in the wind and the buoyed gusts of rain.  She was sitting on the sun-beaten bench, clutching a dock pole.  She shivered evenly as the rain hit the water.  She had a cigarette clutched in her right hand, soaked through and rat hair brown.  The water spiked and danced along the rain-punctured plane for as far as she could see.  She shook, battered by rain.  Finally, she made fists as she shivered and the cigarette was crushed.  It could have been dried out.  She felt it slip softly away in the rain as she let her fingers open her palm to the sky.  Lightning struck far away along the dome of the sky and she bolted for the house.  Across the grass and up the hill, down the dirt road, then left at the first mailbox, a homemade box with peeling green paint, skewered there like a fool in a pillory. 

            On the road the trees hung like an ancient tunnel, runged, intestinal.  She walked quietly, drumming up body heat by rubbing her arms rhythmically around her torso, her elbows strumming her numb ribs.  When the rain stopped, everything was quiet for a moment.  She could just hear the distant highway over the sounds of her bare feet planting and unpeeling on the saturated gravel.  She walked carefully, watching for sharp rocks and tending to the driven-in ruts.  She saw the house and started into a limp jog, her water-logged feet striking the road numbly as she climbed the small slippery hill up to the front yard. 

                     

      

Vern moved slowly

Like something half broken and made of wood

And he smelled of used sandpaper

But there was a whorl in him

A knot in the woodenness of Vern

Interpolated

More by insertion

Than by hernia

He was evil

Exactly

But evil like a snake

With basic drives

That fell comatose

In the cold

He looked like he was in pain

Like he’d been folded up in a drawer

With the peanut shells

And greasy handwritten receipts

Single serving boxes of Frosted Flakes

And the accumulation of sand

From before the internet

Vern is the evil Yoda of white trash

Talking like his face doesn’t work

Hunched and covered in cement dust

I’d like to kick his head off

Like in the movies

Clean off

Sailing away like a soccer ball

But today he brings in a check

So I sell him the dirt

Because a check is at least

Evidence

Rumors of strange rituals

Had piqued our curiosity

And it was early in June

When Karen and I decided to visit the island

Out of a shared curiosity

For primitive things

And vacationing

In warm places

Suitcases in the foyer

And cab called

I stood in the doorway the day we were leaving

And watched her spray her hair

Narrowing her eyes with her head tilted

Jogging the bottle side to side

As she watched herself in the mirror

And started in on her face

Lipstick

Then mascara

Over a tasteful slash of eye shadow

And I stood wondering

Why is Karen getting made up

To visit an island

Full of savages

Who worship the sun

And eat nothing but insects

And rigid island-yams

Cooked over open fires, no doubt

And as we got closer

I became doubtful and pessimistic

Karen noticed and grew sullen herself

Resentful of my withdrawal

But the sand was hot when we hit the shore

And it immediately filled my shoes with hot grit

But Karen slipped gracefully

All but tossing her things on the beach

As her dress billowed perfectly

In the warm wind

That peeled the surf away

Like ripe pear skin

The already distant ferry

Trailing smoke like blackened cotton