And here will hang your entrance arm
bent grotesque against a dizzied and melting spine
The Sun was too high to spill your diamond-tipped, quasimodo shadow
along the starved concrete
Mesa and Mountain and horizon were rendered flat in the shadowless air
dimensionless and enclosed save the gaping maw

The sickening gorge spun below rust-gnawed steel
nothing holds up the bridge but span itself
Below, brown tongue licks banks of broken teeth
rows of them as deep as great whites’
Froth and spittle
pool amongst the raw bores and crags, the rotten gums,
which the slavered tongue probes with silver lace
before it flows beyond cracked lips rouged with ochre and grey.

Black satin nooses slipped in the rail-slit wind
The bars were too low for some

Where could love flutter above suspense of such ravenous, tectonic jaws
a rift that does not abide foot-borne crossing
hand-in-hand or single file
The new-aged, New-Made Man should have left it impassable
what defeat in the long way round
as long as we make it