Cloudwash smogbanks         backlit brakelight-
red red-        pulsing radio spires
spindling palmtops         dropping away
in the bleared rearview          soundlessly above
the slipstream’s sough          the radio’s froth
resolving to a tonic           voice intoning
local rates of flow            pileups reports
of crests and troughs           in graphs of oil
derricks’ arcs             collapsing
sine-hills of salt-sludge             rising tangent
to desalination plants               colonies of gulls
at feed too far           inland and

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the signal drifts           voice swells
out of phase and flows            back to stopless
salt-white waves            the windshield blazes
blank beneath                a helicopter’s hi-beam
overpassing to             strafe again
the poorer feeder streets            now
blotting out             the dash the clock
and tach- and odometer’s              lit integers
the fuel gauge          compass of this day’s
running blood            its steady needle
sinking east