The cop holds me up like a fish;he feels the huge bonessurrounding my eyes,and he runs a thumb under them,lifting my eyelidsas if they wereenvelopes filled with the night.
Now he turnsmy head back and forth, gently,until I'm so tame and stillI could be a tiny, plasticskull left on thedashboard of a junked car.
By now he's so sure of mehe chews gum,and drops his flashlight to his side;he could be cleaning a trout while the pines rise into the darkness, though tonight trout are freezing into bits of stars under the ice.
When he lets me go I feel numb.
I feel like a fish burned by his touch, and turnand slip into the cold night rippling with neons, and the razor blades of the poor, and the torn mouths on posters. Once,
I thought even through this I could go quietly as a star turning over and over in the deep truce of its light. Now,
I must go on repeating the last, filthywords on the lips of this shunken headshining out of its death in the moon— until trout surface with their petrified, round eyes, and the stars begin Philip Levine
