The sun should make them brothers.

No, much closer, worse. It melds them

brow and armpit, consanguinity

of sweat. They smell each other's

wishful dreams of drowning,

miles from water. They stop

in the skinny shade of lightpoles

at a curbside red as sunstroke.

No Parking. In white-hot smog

the trucks expand their metal frames,

rub fenders. Flint and sparks

off pavement, sirens repeating

arson murder mayhem. Traffic's

strung on lines of brake-lights

a hair-trigger.