The Haunting of Archer Avenue

For the most part it’s all true:
the white dress and fade. Radio
static and the street slicked black

as cats. Ask me where the light goes
and I say dance halls, their music
dwindling to a note that silks along

the inner ear. But here, I’m
an understudy of dark, the slip
in the shadow that speaks

like a girl, but isn’t. Kiss me
and I taste like broken light bulbs.
Batteries draining in parking lots.

Doubt inhabits the space between cars,
the drag of headlights over grass
just thickening in the cold. Imagine,

if you will, the pitch between stoplights.
Kiss me and the landscape swerves left.