Gallery, and: Zoo, and: The Bike Mechanic, and: Afternoon Walk, and: Obituary for a Photographer

Gallery

An old woman falls on her mouth, starts sobbing.Others, hectic, search for her teeth between stones.Not close, I return to the Coliseum-vacant mushroom ring.

Weeks since you came to in the woods, raped, strangled,blood-filled eyes, you said that your boyfriend loved you,as if once a Doberman took your skirt hem,led you off downtown.

Doug firs, smoke breaks stopped us from finding him first,hanged kid. Police taped off the meadow. Tonightyou will rest the knife on your forearm askingme not to leave you.

While you took a shower, I sang, "a dog namedrover." Toweling dry at the mirror, you werepinching stomach fat. We were fifteen. I wasrocking your small son.

Now I work downtown near the Union GospelMission, where I sang to the addicts-church hymnsI was young then, vaguely believing in bread,classifieds, starched shirts.

When they moved, we collected toilet paperrolls, a frayed sombrero, top ramen sacks. Weknew nothing about them except the house wouldneed to be painted.

Zoo

I (obsessed with drawing long-legged gray racehorses) pulled a brick at my skull while fallingfrom a moving truck. Now today is groomed andgray with misplaced lines.

Did I die before? I did pack a Campbell'ssoup can full of powder and lit its fuse, ran,climbed the apple tree as the state pen park blew.Searchlights then search dogs.

Milk poured out pink. I had no children. I livedin the city, walked to my job behind tenblack suits lightly armed with red gladiolas,dutiful foxhound.

I could play Freight-Train then by heart, and bought inSpain a second-hand redwood guitar-cropped deer rifle. I sang my valentines somehow while mycalluses faded.

Death floats in a newspaper boat I foldedor a wasps nest, nevertheless no wind. Pleasestack my birthday hats on a summer grave soI can keep playing.

In Domus Aurea, we are grass-blades blownthrough the thin shed membrane of snakeskin followedby the swift night janitor's thatched broom sweepingfingerprints, dust, us.

The Bike Mechanic

Before, may that I rest in Eden again, please let mesurface on the gray city's jaw and catch a whiffof sandalwood off the Soap Wrapper King and followas shy as a corn husk doll a laundry line's distance

behind with a wimpled heart and watch him lookin the cars on Brooklyn Avenue for all the thingsnot worth taking, but only getting his image back,a thin guard-dog glance with different sized eyes-

the left held wide by his working brow, the rightslumped on the bench of a weed conquered boat- that bark him back to the straight line, his nosesaturating in the scent of a flimsy wish gnawed off.

He, the truer of wheels, cleaner of parts, staggers a littleunder the chase of the clock on this Monday off,scrubbed his hands in the morning and the chains' greasewouldn't come out from the cracks, his nails black,

slip into his pockets. Safeco building's stoutas a baker ahead, Cedar's Indian Kitchen perfumingthe street, a haytruck clears its throat,ogres by, and he doesn't believe he is lucky.

Aternoon Walk

We were hurrying. Where-I didn't ask, I lagged behind you.I watched the moss in the cracks,the long gray between, my boot tips and their usualpuppet act, my hand in the hedge shufflingthe leaves. We turned into the gas station. "Oh shit,"you said and you ran back the way we came,but there was no man with a gun. I studied the pumpsand the spills, no match was burning,in the hut the cashier turnedthe register key on and off.I took a right to the park. I walked downby the creek, the hatchery fry waggedin the current, the skunk cabbage muskscented the ravine, the hemlock...