We are not fighting as it gets  
dark in the A & P parking lot. We are  

eating the whole bag, no-one  

tells us not to. Ribbed paper label,  
loud price & eyehole torn open   

on the E-brake. On which letters claim  
what we swallow is candy peanuts but we  

know we're eating minutes of not  

fighting against everyone. Piece 
after piece. From pole-tops vapor  

snaps on & argues with it getting 
dark. Till they're gone: like no 

color in the natural world, hollowed  

orange or ghost taupe, 16 oz. 
for a dollar on the dollar candy rack.   

Your powers rise above me like someone 
who walks up the side of a building.  

Back from another day you made   

student shadows pass across a gym 
floor leaping in your department of old windows  

& dance. Defeat is stretched in every  
direction like blacktop striped to show where   

to stop. But we cheat it with corn   

syrup shot into peanut shapes  
that came off a metal belt at a bottom  

wage. I forgive you for before, your fury  

spilled into me like a firefighter's hose 
thrashing at danger. Now streetlights  

drift past your sadness driving us  
home. From side streets drivers fly at us 

like hockey players. I have no-one if I don't 

have you. The plate set before me,  
my one room. I put on a shining 

hat of your broken heart.  

Dan Alter’s first collection “My Little Book of Exiles” won the Poetry Prize for the 2022 Anne and Robert Cowan Writer’s Awards. He lives with his wife and daughter in Berkeley and makes his living as an IBEW electrician.