The Coat

THE COAT / Jeffrey Greene Nobody wears this coat that holds the form of a body with sweat and carbon from passing diesels. Left on a switching bar, it looks like someone standing there, zipped to the collar, thankful for what nobody could put a finger on— the morning comes to it on rails. It's up to everyone else to pursue happiness, now after spring, and be thankful for the coolness keeping down mosquitoes that breed in the sauce can or the palm of a rubber glove. Propane whispers to kitchens near the tracks and one trash can stands as the left foul line for the softball diamond of chipped tile, cinders, and dirt. This lot is still wet from the night, quiet between fellowships of mourning doves, the unemployed and neighborhood athletes, tall and mythical. The myth of the coat is idleness, someone meditating day after day, whispering about joy under the blue sky. The same blue pours through the charred roof of the church and holds together 20 · The Missouri Review all the fragments of the city. Everything is clear around the glittering tracks, the shotgun houses with holes in their screens for faces, cats, or fans whirring through the sounds of pleasure, yielding to exhaustion in the room's dark. Nothing can be done with troubles and tasks aren't a matter of courage, since idleness has no hands. Jeffrey Greene The Missouri Review · 21 ...