Paced as the leaden tarpaulin laps up the wet concrete it covers, however antiquities in present day annihilate a vision of then. Undulating steel towers quake in the presence of them, the arms of young women and men split under veiled layers of crystalline sweat. I wonder, beyond, if the waste plant processes integration into the next stepped fortress, the escalator, acts plastered with pages of a scripture embedded into ground newly laid. Waste leaves high water marks as it floods past the lobby and into the cracked sand of the desert wherever, and cries of mercy reach for heaven on trellises made of the faintly indented treated metal, the hand worked accessories, the indentured handcuffs and those damp palms held in absentia. It blows, into the hollow of a rusted well whose layers flake with the shedding of emigrated finishes, begging out of the coffers acquainted with a prayer sent upwards in the rush of air as a javelin drives through stops in the underground accretion of me. The call, answered from the heavyset towers that leave no promise of return, for the unrest of sedimentary fortress mortar held together by the reinforcing spit of the split-tongued. Does one ask for the improvement of wishes granted and left unclaimed? Like the acclimation of eyes to the séance burned neon, the fibrous musculature of worked bodies drawn taught, the hardening of those trained to their discipline. The drawn bridge draws closer and in the slightest hum of the powder coated steel one hears the results of a closed election. The delegate returns to a room carpeted in the acceptance of stabilized neighbors that in their own dwelling answer to no one. And in the center a hearth holds ashes of uncashed coupons – those offering discounted entrance, gradation in the strength of addiction, usherings past party doors, a reduction in honesty for the aspirational, those who seek renovations and ignore us as they cast votes to our peers whose inheritance stacks high in prefab cabinetry. The sap that forms in the sweat of plastics binds the clasp of their belts, that cannot be loosened after a prix fixe meal. So reaching to the bottom of an unlined purse I come up with the crumbs of impanation, of crust broken on the teeth of the lipless, whose smoke stained facets catches the glint of sparks made by the rubbing of steeled shoulders as they rush the bouncer who lands upright. The latch that falls behind gives thanks discretely as you make room for the next.