Mustard-colored curtains dance L.A. summer breezes.
An antique phonograph scats Scott Davis and the Village
Vanguard. Seventies shag carpet—beige, mint. Sea foam
walls droop with thrift store treasure. Cushion-covers, quilted,
each square an ancient photograph, faces, haunts, old
rivering echoes.
She’s tall, thin. A skinny Snow White,
black-eyes and red-hair.
Wears a shirt the color of the sky
before it weeps.
This smell. This room. Tack one wallside and
run. Stretch it over sangre highways and desert cities,
fly it in the bake-and-broil blue, over dreamed-up fields
and gravestones. Stretch it round a million miles,
galaxies away from the huffing, puffing mouths
yelling, Blow the house down!Looks twenty-three at me. California studio. Kitten.
Charity work/ Loans, alarm clocks, credit cards.
She’s fishing for an absent Charming, so I open wide
and drag her down deep as hook will take us.
We met five hundred years ago, in sequin
Masks, in an Inquisition prison cell.
Tired souls bending, swaying infinite,
twisted and twirling.
Her heaven is dark chocolate and Romantic
poetry, angsty Love. Trashway alley rants.
Quaking whispers echoed down her Russian
novel hallways. Shattered glass, stuff like that.
A painting three feet tall, more long,
Seculuded forest pond at dusk. Autumn. Flameshot
leaves screaming off from oaks. Shadows dark against
the soil. Lilies float across the murky water.
A gurgling fall smiles at us from the far side.
The Horror, she calls it. She’s right: it is this dated
decor’s northern star, straight on till morning.
“Beautiful place to live,” she says, but
“A pleasant place to fade away,” is all I have for her.
No comments:
Post a Comment