Absence of evidence

is not
evidence of absence.

Flannery Lane, proof
of high school bullying,

tied to a
psychosis of trailer park,

said to me in 1995:

At noon, yesterday,
I spoke of logotherapy from atop a
sticky heat of pancake lava dome:
slag of mouth and stems where
none existed, worthy only of signs
denoting sulphuric cloud motiles.

By winter of 2000, Flannery's hands
were webbed, her speech slurred
by dirty windshield, rubber summers,
and pet cemetery teeth.

Her face appeared elongated, pearish,
and people rumored her to be mating
with an alien. She developed a habit
of standing at the chicken-wire entrance
to her trailer park and waving down cars
just to talk.

I saw you, she would say,
as you rolled down the window.
You were taped
to the earth. It waved woozy
atop your left shoulder, globish green
in a cloud break with
23,168 species of beetle
spraying out in little stars
like breath around your head.