I did not panic when I drove my truck into a ditch of trees.
Snap of birch, crack of branch,
there is no sound for this in space.
Maybe I was too drunk or too alone
too much stardust
nostalgic for everything
that was nothing
before that big bang thing.
I’m billions of years
in the driver’s seat of my Chevy Blazer,
packed full of galaxies
colliding, I’m everything moving so slow.
Stars in my mouth and hair, in my shoes and air.
I’m so sparkle and stumble
running down the highway at 4 a.m.,
truck ditched on a side road billows of smoke,
this explosion,
all asteroids and comet tails,
I orbit death.
Six years earlier: my wrists turn solar systems,
planets falter and separate,
alone and adrift
and two years earlier, a swallowed bottle of nebulae,
collapsed supernovas.
It never ends.
A head of black holes sucks light out of everything.
b: william bearhart is a direct descendent of the St Croix Chippewa of Wisconsin and an MFA candidate in the Lo Rez program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His work can be found in places like Big Bell, inter|rupture, and PANK.