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| Crack in the Sidewalk |
Everyone is moving. Back rent unpardonable.
"No one allowed to squat on the lawn. No one
allowed to run around." A new owner, a new
manager, and a thirty percent raise in rent.
Shadows feel through the window
past reflected branches swaying
before his face in the glass. He
follows tiny blackened stars of blood
on the concrete, pulling his salvaged
wagon out to where the valuables wait--
a mirror, houseplants, stuffed animals,
a stray hand--and stares, timeless, at himself,
the journey already beginning, the dirt
peeling away from the street
as if the cells of everything
were sloughing off into the wind.
The old woman who had pinned his Nina, Pinta
and Santa Maria to her frig with a strawberry
magnet might steer a shopping cart
out the door, and he could curl up
below the carriage, dragging the cart
forward like a turtle, his shell heavier and heavier
as they trek down the alley. He goes back inside
and curls, legs up, on his bed, then ferries a Matchbox
ambulence in a stray sandal to bundles of wash,
the Canary Islands. Through the window, he sees
a bus lurching forward, floating into a cross-street
two lights away, vanishing downtown....
__________
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| Shopping Cart in Vacant Lot |
He refuses to clean the bedroom
in the full-length mirror and bats at motes
swimming in an aquarium
of sunlight. Stitches closed
the tunnel between his nose and mouth
and cinched his cleft lip, which had gaped
at the horn of gum blanketed
and rose-tinged by the sloping
pillar of nostril. In a forest
of toys, the mirror world,
a beast bursts from a human
womb, snout whimpering, tail
flailing as it bangs
into the witnessing denizens.
In this nightmare story (overheard
at a picnic) the doctor
stares at clawmarks
in his chest while the beast
dies from tranquillizers, still
attempting to scurry away.
But when he was born, his body slowly slipped
from the flesh that clothed him, his eyes opening
to the glare in tile and instrument and mirror.
The nurse took prints of feet and thumb
and handed him to his mother,
who wept, hearing the words harelip
and cleft palate, as he lay, clear and firm,
in her arms.
He slurs that he loses his elbow
just like he loses his lap--
as one loses a world. The neighbors
have moved, emptying their rooms,
taking his little friend with them.
Someone else must screech
and drum the floor with dancing feet.
He stands within the bare walls
and stares at the prospects
of all he loves, the magnolias
dropping shreds of purple paper,
faces without eyes or ears
or noses shining in hubcaps,
and tongues rising from the asphalt
without justification.
__________
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| Bubbles |
Phantom jets scrape the roof. Slow
thunder unravels the air
down to the pig-colored walls.
Bubbles bob, thin cities of light, evade
his frenzied hands and slide
through a mirrored window
where images of the courtyard curve
repeatedly upward, one and multiple.
In the corner, a dented cart,
a philodendron jungle, and a mattress
smeared with yellow dust.
He climbs into the cart,
hanging on a pane where bubbles slid
through, the fading circles
unbroken, his palms, fingertips, and nose
pressed to the glass. Bug-littered,
celestial porchlights switch on.
He wizens a plum with budding teeth
in a clinker of fallen gingko leaves
as he watches them drive away.
He was told about the invisible,
how it lives like air and squeezes
like smoke, how it resides
in his teeth and falls in his hair,
its hour like breath,
how it grows from earth and fire,
providing each table
with light and with water
as cold as winter rain.
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