Fissure

The veins underneath her tongue
are cut lose, and feel like they’re
trying to run away from her face.
Entire complexes stay up all hours
of the night, and remember things
in ways that bar them from the daylight.
Hazy neon signs, through smears of dust
on the glass, make the world seem like a dream
outside the window. Shuffling cards with
holes punched in their centers, to deal
hands to skeletal specters around a table.
They bet nothing but the layers of
film building up in their eye sockets,
and watch baseball games on the T.V.
Cigarettes have no effect on them, but
they tear through cartons then head to bed.
The world has never been more
dead, at the same time, every
fissure forms a pattern.