By Mark Alan Williams

Featured art by Katie Manning

We buy hot dogs at a gas station
of broken pumps and eat them
on the pier, watching ratty shrimpers
limp in for new bandages,
sit there in the cold for hours,
thinking sunset will fill the bay
with the blood of the Brazos,
do something holy to us.

This is after Ganado,
and Victoria, and Refugio,
and Point Comfort, and Blessing.

We’re newlyweds,
willing to burn fuel on skywriting
if it can make marriage
feel less like living in Houston.

Sunset hangs around
like a towel that won’t dry,
and when we tire of waiting,
we leave the dim, fuming galaxy
of refineries for home,
bright and deadly as a hospital
circled by ambulances, the music off.