was not always this huge, nor I.
We grew like redwoods, equally
slow, together. I found
my bicycle crippled, tireless,
tangled in the kudzu. Resurrected,
shining like a Cadillac, we pedalled
Southern streets, the diamonds
sparkling in the asphalt rushing
beneath us. I felt the tug
of my bicycle while chained
to its rack outside the Highlander,
where I'd chained myself
to a barstool. My bicycle grew
lonely. I found another bicycle
rusting in the Salvation Army.
Sparks flew, molten metal, a bicycle
marriage. Still, my bicycle pestered
me from its lonely bike rack,
witnessing after-school fights
while I licked away the amber
whiskey trapped in my cuticles.
I bought my bicycle shots of Jaeger.
We rode to Vickery's, to the Righteous
Room, to Smith's. My bicycle and I
grew attached--as they say--at the hip.
Though, realistically, we'd fused
at the crotch. Soon I saw the pebbles
below the tires were really boulders
and automobiles, that the bike trail
was actually a grid of city streets,
and the patchwork I had taken
for flagstones were houses
and skyscrapers. My bicycle and I
topped mountains, no bunnyhopped
the Rockies, splashed across a puddle--
the Pacific. We dipped gingerly down
the side of Everest and ground the spokes
against the Great Wall. And soon
my bicycle and I had grown
too big, even, for the planet, each orbit
a single secondary lap. My cap
knocked the space station into
the asteroid belt. I stroked the moon
and my fingers came away gray with dust.
My retinas sizzled in the sun's rays.