Last Bender

winter reveals what spring buries in green drought undresses the creek bed and shore exposes the root the sun lies shattered on ice rain peels the paint wind strips the clapboard clean intoxicated ants mill over roadkill deer ravens divide who feeds on the ants and wasps what chews on the dust who bathes in [...]

Fingering the wrinkles of your leather jacket November wind clinging to the skin the cold zipper big by a basket full of sweet potatoes in the bronze reflection of the sun. Inching down the front clumsy at the belt I search the pockets. Brass keys flecked with gold tobacco flakes a parking ticket folded on [...]

At night they disappear between the stars, swallowed up by abysses lit with street lights in the dim orange fog of skies into flag draped coffins or meteor showers of voices washing over the republic. The laughter goes on, prolonged for hours. By day they reappear the others fade to grey submerged in the brightness [...]

Oily flames flicker through the iron fence between the green gauze of ornate lamps buried in trees, a few ragged stars of pink caught in the branches. Make way for the pain of extenuation in a Bowery bar with bright lights and no pool table, where faces bloom in vacuum tubes of steins and snifters. [...]

The stopped voices go on speaking The breezes had lost meadows and found truck tires blasting smoke at the sky Flesh drifting seaward a scarf of purple and orange dissolving on the tongue and eye A ruined taste in the mouth of old bricks and dead plaster the ash of burnt clothes and posters Limestone [...]