Instamatic

They’re demonstrating space-time
again, the bats. All day the bridge’s dank was ripe
for census, but they launch as a singular
attraction, a thick

scrunch of bat-fabric

plotting diagrams on blank
evening. The arc of tourists uncap cameras and take
their moments: bats
as flung sand, as fishnet stocking, as a thin

stretch of black static

winding toward sunset.
Shake out every album and the city
is immediate. A spotless switchyard meets its rusting
ghost. Dumpsters and draft horses bask in the diner’s

clutch of cracked, spastic

neon. I took pictures
of a fairy tale, once. Here’s the dragon,
a pile of bones. Here’s the princess,
a zygote,

sconced in pale, tragic

petri. We married in June and she was beautiful
from certain angles. Our boys were
killed in every war at once.

(First published in Prairie Schooner)