By James Pate

Others shopped among the aisles of pastel clothes / Mozart and icy static on the sound system / dogs in the lot, blood freckles, white fur / I wear the pistol under my vest / I hold the black rotary phone against my chest / speak nothing, touch nothing, think nothing / spots of blood and shit on otherwise clean sheets / doves explode in the air over us / sizzling fireworks / pink candy falling / into crushed mouths / Bach playing from metal in the teeth / under anonymous directions / some in pastel polo shirts, summer dresses / floating through scorched air / strings of pearls sliding through holes in the throat / ever and ever  / snorting coke from tiger carpets in Victorian photographs /

James Pate is a poet and fiction writer whose work has appeared in La Petite Zine, storySouth, Cream City Review, Black Warrior Review, Blue Mesa Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, Pembroke Magazine, Juked, and Bayou Magazine, among other places. He is the author of The Fassbinder Diaries (Civil Coping Mechanisms). He currently teaches at Shepherd University. (Updated June 2015)