The Bridge

We bought five gallons of water at the off-grid store, then buckled the jug upright in the back seat. Earthquakes buckled the road, where still the orange cones sit. Late the songbirds sang in the cross-hatch of hapu`u shadows. A child at the border draws a picture of herself inside a grid. Not on European notebook paper; the lines are foreground, not back. She writes that once her baby is born, she will hold him to her bare skin. Too much boundary, too little liquid space. The iPhone camera offers no depth, like the child's drawing. It's not just affect that's flat.


A woman in red cap says Biden is a white man. He should look in the mirror, she says; he might notice that he's white. He has a large ego.


Before he leaves, he pulls the pin on a grenade and passes it to her. Her three children watch from a couch as she presses it in her hand. He's planned this for five years, ever since his wife and son were killed on the bridge between Denmark and Sweden. Faked his own suicide. The late surgeon's nurse tells detectives that he became a handsome man. The Truth Terrorist killed those he wanted to save. Power of the media, you know. If you set enough fires, the children will survive. If you wander into his net, they will not. We all cheer for fires.


Canopied spider web on the trail beside Kilauea Iki; it seems to float in air between trees. Leaves cut through it, and the light causes it to glow. A spirit web, disorganized but dotted with prey.

Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul. (WW)

The bridge lives in negative space, empty above and below. Cars trace bending lines. He cuts power for the time it takes to install two half-bodies at the boundary and disappear. We see his gloves, a steering wheel, and little else. The plot is a sticky net that holds us to its threads. To read is to be its prey. 

On Devastation Trail, a father yells at his child to put NOTHING in his hair. "Can I put hair in my hair?" the boy replies. His father defines "nothing" for him, again. His red haired sibling looks up at me and wishes me a "happy 4th of July" as we cross paths. A third child tells us not to pick lehua blossoms. 

It rains in nets on the volcano's gravel dust. Brad notes it looks gray close up but acquires a red tinge farther away. Paradise blush, a sign calls the red on new leaves, protecting them from the sun. Define the word "it," I ask my students, then explain how you've used it in a sentence where it crosses like fluid gender between states. Our incapacity to locate the state between states, the one that shifts.

After Whitman, the formatting changed; it grew more pinched, the space between paragraphs. A shorter interval, the boundary has shrunken, or a car gains speed across the bridge. The mystery vehicle has over 200-horse power and no leg room in the back seat. It's a red convertible.

The wall is inverse bridge. The wall is ego that cannot cross between us. The boy's interlocutor on-line was not his girlfriend, but a psychopath who gave good advice on father-son issues. He had lost his son, but gained a chat partner who fed him clues. Chat in Danish is chat. Flotte me asks forgiveness, but there is so little to give. Revenge is forgiveness' inverse. Tacoma Narrows Bridge on video sways faster and faster until it breaks apart, lone vehicle swaying at the top of its arc. When the arc breaks, you arrive not at a straight line but at the spray of cement and steel. 

Note: Plot lines based on The Bridge, a Danish-Swedish TV show.