As The World Turned

5:30 a.m., the traffic man said they found a body
on the shoulder of the 605. Car lights wound back up
through the canyon pass like an angry boa constrictor
whose skin was on fire.

The CEO of a toy manufacturer committed
suicide last night; his company painted toys
with toxic levels of lead. A pediatric neurologist
described ensuing loss of appetite, tremors, coma

while holding up figurines of mickey mouse and barbie.

I rolled over to watch the dog's chest rise and fall
at the end of the bed, his neck hair glowing in the t.v's shine
like an alien strobe from a friendly ufo that had settled on
a crude and violent planet. We found the remote

and turned the world off.