Something’s Coming

I follow locusts.
I think they’re loyal, but it’s a story.
In morning’s bleached streets and nights
of tungsten glinting, their fretted steel legs
ticker the minutes.
What do I know, except I need
a thing to walk behind.
The lot tagged The Devil,
red spray paint, two concrete steps.
This is where I go
when the heat comes, when no one alive can tell me
how to make the day move on.
She lies there, the bitch,
in a bed convex from her weight.
Though it’s dusk,
I see she is the color of dirt.
Though fleas open
new roads through her hair, she is asleep.
I hear thunder.
Some days it rumbles dry, no rain.
I’m tired. The air here,
it’s like breathing gasoline.
I lie down, too. A razor,
a latex glove turned inside out.
I curl my body close
to hers, my lips, nose to her spine.
I close my eyes.
I want the mites to leave without me, but they don’t.