skulls

by Ross Vassilev

night crawls on its belly
and somewhere in Cleveland
a young man gets stabbed to death
in a parking lot--
the bottle is empty
the doors are locked
headless mice lie in the yard
I'm starting to understand leeches
and serial killers
I try to cheer myself up
thinking of lipstick lezzies
blue warblers
and the foreign occupiers getting slaughtered
at Ong Thanh
but the light at the end of tunnel
ain't no on-coming train
just a neon bulb that's flickering out.