after Kendrick Lamar’s “Untitled 05”

i opened the icebox, fished a pocket knife out of the tub of lard, and went off looking for the guy who owed me money. the heat wave’d burned itself out but the sky still smelled like piss, fields bleached for 40 acres on either side of the road. at the river crossing all the rats scrambled up the bilge of a coalship. that there were 42,951 structurally deficient bridges in the united states when i wrote this poem is relevant only insofar as i used it to externalize my fear. anyway, the guy'd stiffed me for a bottle of unisom that i'd said was vikes. i'd given him the month out to get me right and a season went by so there i was, idling outside the gas station where he clerked. went inside and his kid was on the counter, babbling like he was reading a tablet pulled out of a ruined temple so i bought a pack of mike & ikes and left. the road cut through the mountain like someone's dream of a straight line. i thought of my uncle, drinking in a field with a holy roller he’d lured off the doorstep before starting the ignition and driving his ford taurus into someone’s kitchen. holy roller died, uncle survived, and i spent five years in catholic school. deer crowded the guardrail like angels caught in the glow of a shotgun blast. i stopped at the dam. a loon skittered across the lake like a tallboy on a freeway. i threw my knife in and watched water crest over the embankment.