PIECE

It was something he saw in a gallery.
He felt a strong feeling when he approached.
Viewers were permitted to enter
and when he did a numbness rushed over him.

He wanted the piece and decided to buy it.
He had it attached to the side of his house.
After living with it for a short while
he had the house removed.
Now it was just the piece.

Later he commissioned a second piece
and attached it to the first.
He called it Piece.

Eventually the man hauled home a third piece.
He attached it to the end of the other two.
He walked through this third piece,
running his hands along the walls.

Because the neighbors were believers
they could say among other things
that they saw his strange wheelbarrow
parked outside in the snow
with its human ankles for handles.


A GORGEOUS HOTEL, IN A GRAND CITY

I had walked across the carpetted lobby and down a long marble corridor, passing glassed-in phonebooths and rows of tall potted plants, and staggered into the Men’s Room.

My eyes were stinging. Everything had grown blurry as I’d made my way through the lobby. I moved toward the sinks and the mirrors. I could no longer see my own hands, but in the brightness I sensed the expanse of tile and brushed metals and knew at once I was alone.

I was squinting I guess. I contracted every muscle in my face.  As I did this a series of droplets came out of both eyes and stayed close to my cheeks, travelling down them, each droplet leaving a kind of track. Streaks I suppose. For a few brief moments I could see again. The tiles and the metals.  And then again the room grew blurry.

It was then I heard a faucet running.  Someone was there.  A man was suggesting I was crying.  Crying!  I doubted this--told him I seriously doubted this.  I slumped down onto my knees, holding my head in both hands.  More droplets.  My head felt just like a trophy, so I held it as such.


ACQUAINTANCE

I dropped a smoked almond on the plaid carpet.
The robin loomed large
when in fact he just sat in the yard.
It’s been a while since I’ve ridden a bike.
When men are idle they’ll hold a hand to their face.
I actually saw a beaver the other day.
REO Speedwagon over the p.a. made me feel like weeping.
A restaurant where the paint was still drying.
My waitress with the hands of a newborn baby.
She pointed to things on the menu,
reached over to my menu and gently pointed,
tapping with her baby finger.  Fish-n-chips.
I looked at her and paused.
A spring tuber literally sunned itself in my mind.


BECAUSE OF ROY

Roy could move a lot of sheep.
He moved them off the mountain
with his arms outstretched
at 40 degree angles.
Roy never spoke.
He wore navy corduroys.
This annoyed some of the guys.
He walked like a foster child
stepping carefully
and sometimes robotically.
The sheep respected this.
They kept their mouths shut
for once, and flowed down, down,
in a tight and docile band
over the uneven terrain,
because of Roy.


PATRON OF THE BUSES
The driver said we had five more minutes.
Some of us smoked.  Someone passed around
a large bag of Cheetohs.

The driver closed a book he’d been reading.
He said we were each like a single straight pin
moving noiselessly through a black hole.
And that this is how it would always be.

A shoe... a kind of slipper
was in the road.
As I bent down I thought:
no heel strap-- and
no strap to fit around the heel.

We call that a mule said the driver.
(I had no idea why.)

I had no idea why.
I cleared my throat and indicated this.
I had Christopher Walken hair.
He said to get back on the bus,
to get back on the bus now.

   *

Things seen from a bus at night:

through a narrow window
the blood-red walls of a study;

farmgrade yardlights raping
the January branches of
a Japanese maple;

a screaming woman running,
then stopping, then
turning around--

for I am a patron of the buses.

What else do you see? someone asked.
I said I saw a silk scarf dusted with talc.
I said I saw Belgian waffles, and lapsang souchong.
I said I saw a girl with a tattoo on her chest
of a beautiful bench, a bench in a garden.
It looked sturdy.
And I said that I could see now
that a child was out climbing
a very important elephant,
in the elephant’s winter prison.

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