The first cop on scene says
what a strange song to play while driving.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah…
The body lends itself
to folded metal. Its wires
& veins. Its hearts
& engines. Compressed under airbag, the wife asks
her husband when they last bruised
their knees on Sunday pews.
His response is the shrieking
siren. The spitting grass.
The silence, his voice
cracked into silence.
Maybe there’s a God above
& she wishes she drank more of his wine-blood & ate more
of his bread-body.
Hours before, he said drive
& she drove.
Through city & country & ribcage backroads.
Through his mama’s old neighborhood
& papa’s aged block & he said
but all I’ve ever learned from love
are the bubbles in champagne that fizz & burst
like bullets in the mouth. Poison.
She swallowed her wedding ring
& wondered if it was a tonic or toxic.
The car dragged the sun into the ditch with it:
stomaching dusk & birthing night.
For the front headlights pointed to
to the center of the Earth. For
the cracks in the windows & windshields.
For the trafficked road &
honking cars
& still-playing radio.
was how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya.
New cops arrive. Closer,
they head to the car. The wife screams
her vocal cords raw into blooming berries
& it’s not a cry that you hear at night.
Just in case, the cop checks the time. Writes it down. Wonders
what their names look like in marble.
The wife thinks: this is life.
She tries to grab her husband’s hand, fisted
in his lap, & for once,
he doesn’t pull away. His eyes are open, both
looking & not looking
Three bangs on the window: two from cops, one from her.
Open, they say.
She opens.
Louder now, it’s not somebody who’s seen the light.
They ask:
Was she under the influence? No.
Driving alone? No: she says
she’s always been half a body, it’s a cold half.
The ambulance calls. She walks. They ask if
she’s okay, & she says it’s a broken Hallelujah
& says she didn’t like the song much anyway.
