I wait outside the dog race track
Wyoming picnic parking lot,
me standing out against wide-eyed farmers,
skulls carved clean of brain
leading their wives into Labor…
drops of mucousy blood seep across their foreheads.

Finally, I lose my patience.
Inside the track, they ask for my I.D.
Muscles flexing bust the bodyguards’ T-shirts
as they work me over.

And then there he is standing over me,
his breath heavy
as if he delivered the blows himself
“Get up, boy,” he says,
“Come into my office.”
Watching the bobbing, white-haired moon of his head,
I follow him into a pink room filled with bamboo frames.
He whirls on one heal and faces me,
“You’re a Kamikaze, boy!
You stand up to me!”
I don’t answer.
He pulls an ivory blade from his mouth
and I can see black honey dripping from it.
“Boy, I’ll slit your throat!”
I stand as stone to him.
My eyes let out the light he doesn’t want to see.
He comes up to me Nazi benefactor;
black capris,
velvet swastika,
and soft, lead teeth.
He repeats his threat as a promise.

I smooth my cheeks as I smell the separation coming.
And I meet his stare.
And I see the eternal white plain ahead.