I am the log the river shakes downstream when the helmsman turns on pulsing disco and mechanical rowers chant pins and needles, pins and needles. I’m 100% sure those are the words until they become friends in need and friends in need and into the chute I'm sent. The periscope mirror above my face to ease claustrophobia doesn’t fool my mind. I sense the lethal weight of magnets closing round my brain. I churn with the noise that will transform secrets of my dark tissue into silent psychedelic imagery. I become lumber run through the mill, hammered, sawed, planed, and drilled, bolted and drilled again, vibration after vibration in a chilled room with a useless sheet tossed over my legs— a preview of my own autopsy? A wet prick of dye announces Act II. An intercom voice asks are you all right? I say yes despite numb fingers, dizziness of holding still, breathing minutes away through—pins and needles, friends in need and—this construction project of me somewhere between alive and dead. Published in Songs of Eretz