Wife-beatered, bedroom burst with birds
and sons, my grandfather turns left on red

forever. We leave mainland for traffic or fish,
an island for snow, the hereditary list

to Away for his ghost taxi I never heard:
a quartet of poached songbird in the trunk.

In my mirror, I see the men I got drunk
off just breathing them, and tonight I wish

I took the well-trafficked kiss to market,
watched it sun and sell and darken

beside a silver moon of pomfret thanked
for flesh, for time. The fishmonger of me

walks home with a little fish a little empty,
but the next life will be landlocked, so we get

into a taxi and take somebody home
before that life surfaces: some snow, all stone

animals you cannot shoot, agree
-able species floated at the corners of yards.

We’ll ghost into a life like minor chords,
make rearview eyes at what could have flown—

as a taxi turns left on red, four songs shut
in the trunk, testing the border like a cut

so open we’ll know it forever, the words
that could have taken us home nowhere,

then brilliant, gone, fish sailing through air.