mosquito-bit, fat, slung by the old fence—
that is to say, chain-linked between hackberry
& wild cherry, gnarled & reaching, a spent
yet restless sleep yields discourse tangled up
in wintercreeper that grows all night in
dim green fluorescence, flooding the sky like
forest-wrapped meadows, but where the pavement
meets the vines and weeds the glinting stars could blind you.

this sleep ebbs once then breaks before dawn.
chicory-purple cast in its mind’s eye, it puts on
water, brews coffee, cools it with whiskey.
sleep like this can no more last than can the
mulberries in their season caught in a bedsheet
cast over  the dumpster under the tree.