Two sloop-shouldered thin-legged young men beneath the Texaco sign
in Ohio, off state route 55, in the late afternoon, wearing blue jeans,
eating grapes:
                    Find them all-the-time, the first one says, splitting the green skin
between his thumb and index finger. Got them sharp points, got them sides
cut through your hand
                                   if you hold it too tight. Look like leaves, look like
no stone I seen around here. Shine in the sun, flinty, nob-ended, sharp,
sharp as busted up bits of skeet.
                                                     The clear juice of grapes
trickles down his fingers, into the dirt. He holds up his hand. Big as my hand,
he says, but longer, thinner. His hand is beautiful, smooth and pale.

His hand has that glow of a car's headlamp coning the white mist in a dark road.
It is perfect, glistening, juice-slick. It seems to say, watch me, watch me, watch me-
I could sever myself,
                                 skim the field-furrows, dig myself beneath the corn.
Around his feet, a scattering of discarded skins of white grapes, some dust-covered,
some pure and shimmering in the going sun
                                                                    and the young man holds his hand up
a moment longer, flexes his long fingers into a point, like that. Got me
a boxful. His friend carves a long arc in the dirt
                                                                             with his white shoe, shifts
where he sits on the curb's edge, nods, agrees. The sun goes down. The bright sign
glares. Like a thousand edgy little thoughts, the other thinks,

the arrowheads glow in their quiet places beneath the empty cornfields.