My Life Fails To Pass Before My Eyes

I'm naked on a folding chair. She's sipping Sleepytime, wings folded,
bright dial hovering behind her head, enough to light
the tablet on her lap. "Where were we? Nebraska from the back
of an Impala, green moon in the window tint, a gooseberry airborne,
the mouth of the Mekong, pink tongues of barnacles in a Basque bar."

"See what I mean?" she says shaking a feather loose, flipping
a page of her memo pad. I try again: Peacocks on a tiled roof,
all the hens hidden. A big wooden mallet, crabs piled up on newspapers
like red evening purses. A cottonmouth, a raised rake. She rolls
her eyes and points at my scars. Singapore? Lisbon? So many places

have holes in their coins. Again: A guy in Baltimore with a Movado,
thin and black-faced with a dot for midnight. The Joyce Chen cleaver
beneath the box springs. Imagine. Before I wheeled my son
from the bright room. After the lover in Hamburg, the friend
who shipped grease-guns to Argentina. It's no use

telling her I've lost the sequence of things. She won't let me in
without Names and Dates. The dog wants out. They leave together-
I wash up her cup and climb back into bed. Maybe I'll try the Bay Bridge next,
let gravity find order in events as I rush to the long blue deadline.