it’s just the wharf possum, me, and that pop-eyed moon.
one must wear a shroud and act like a river ghost. this is no place to flaunt alleged humanness.
this world engine runs slow and lean in the early morning hours. the world beneath the river reflects forth.
do not answer if one asks for coffee or candied ginger. the first robin sang at five til four.
not long after the moon disappeared a man in a sweaty white t-shirt stalked quickly up the wharf, the stains shaped like lunar craters.
Category Archives: no scape
Dead sparrow / All Saint’s Day
sitting at the downtown coffee shop
before walking to the river to work
there is a dead sparrow on the other side of giant glass window / facing West Main Street
beak down on the sidewalk
out the side of my left eye it sometimes
hops up to skitter away / but / nothing doing
the sparrow lies there as a well-fed business man in an eggplant-colored shirt
walking gingerly in shiny black shoes scoots by / wrinkling his face in disgust
it would not be a stretch to say I look well-fed but the insistence of the left eye / the
hip / shoulder / knee pain reminds me
some passersby would step out / scoot by
my corpse too.
Give us today our daily and don’t forget the napkins
This is a cold fried chicken and tart mushy apple kind of night and autumn is a leaving season.
Keeping the shop door closed keeps the cold out. The shop is a ship of curiosities, a memory palace full of one-liners. (The punch lines left with the people who told the jokes over coffee and the memory of what cigarettes taste like.)
The heater kicks on and I hear it again: that vaguely unintelligible song. The music of metal and heat and squeaky parts. The city is a battle of the bands: there is a song in the interstate overpass rattling as loaded semis storm by at 2 in the morning. Then the fupa-fupa-fup-thump of a tire going flat. The echoes of couples conversations and the lone man in a red hoodie arguing with his demons at 3 am.
We sing, one and all, unaware of the melody. It’s just some tinny tune we heard as a baby. A lullaby or a military march. The memory of a plague whose name is forgotten.
And then? Sunrise.