Rotoscope
It seemed to both of us a colder than
Usual cold.
Don’t pretend you didn’t feel it.
On the white plastic lawnchair, skin slicked
With condensation
over flagstones camed with moss,
The leather pinched us damp. A reached agreement
To be convinced of it. A magician’s sawbox.
My reflection crested in the fender like
A psychosomatic cough,
louder for being listened to.
Locks clicked in their sockets. A siren, maidenlike,
A flashing on the chrome,
circulating lullabies.
And artifacts. Profession of oblivion. An anxious
Dialog balloon. A pillow dreamed as something else.
I was covered with duckweed bits. I almost floated
In the singing fountain.
I turtled my squint from my collar
And you, you laden with flasks, you didn’t turn around.
I barked at you in silence
as you floated down the street,
A gull among the masts of a silent shipyard. Undark city,
Streetlamps indicating night. Rehearsals of our fortune.
Safe cracker
I didn’t have my papers, so they took
My suspenders. My shoelaces.
My yellow shirt,
A pillow to a cowboy. Bleeding in his beard,
Green sod pinched in his waistband,
eyes closed,
He sang, ‘You got all the bricks you ever wanted,’
His knuckles like protrusions in the floor.
The cobblestones clung together on three
Simple principles.
The shape of the faces
Isn’t constant. One finger in the air means it’s time
To leave, no matter what. Promises.
I should’ve started
With the two-by-fours reaching through the orange
Plastic netting like your skinny arms.
I forgot my license is all. The dirty pint glasses
Rang out in the hall. The officer’s eyebrow
Cocked
Made things seem not very hopeful. The sounds resounding
In the room without windows sounded
run through a flanger:
Your throat the same as my hair when I scratched it.
A footstep in the light beneath the door. My finger in the air.
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