(on a sunday)

(yes)

did you imagine
this night would outlive us? at
least i dared the stars.

(fewer naps, i suppose)

now i see. i have
not left enough to leave a
more-than-cloudy sigh.

(ah, that night)

as we flail, soaked and
worn, the music fills what our
tiny missives won’t.

wild persimmon

It was in a dream, I think, where her mouth was a wild persimmon. It grew by a shimmering stream, near the wetland ferns.

Who could wait?

But it was ripe, right, fleshy, full – this one.

I've been here before, down the slopping hill below the earthen levee. I've walked these now-concrete-covered trails in the months after the yellow jackets stop flying. Looking, always looking, hands full before I ever start. How many have I dropped just to snatch another? Too many, I think.

Ah, this is different, this full-grown dream. (It always is, this one). This one sends me back, back to windows fogged, raining, at the lock and dam.

(haiku: things i’ve learned)

(a weekend lesson)

nos unspoken, still.
the question hanging from a
fingers tip. i see.

(vindictive dusters: pt3)

---

Someone – and let’s assume it wasn’t Anya – had strewn scented pine cones throughout her sponsored apartment. Floor grates and bookshelves and piles of perfectly folded kitchen towels masked by industrial cinnamon. Even her dust smelled aggressively delicious.

She was seated in the kitchen, a solitary vine winding its way towards scarce, slatted sunlight behind her. Anya casually cocked her head and gently fingered the silver pebble in her right ear. She’d clearly plagiarized the look.

“White creeping thyme,” Anya blurted. “It reminds me of the concrete stepping stones outside the church.”

“The one where we parked?”

“Of course.  Do you remember the hand-painted sign? I’ve never seen such brilliant whites and blacks.”

“It was so dusty – dry red clay riding the wind. Was it, what, early fall?”

“Remember?  I was wearing your gray sweater. The one you gave me the first night behind my parent’s house.”

“Definitely remember the look on your sister’s face when we came back in.”

“Anyway.  I still think I heard ‘In the Garden’ coming from the church that morning.”

Anya shifted, lips parted, ear untouched. She remembers what I can’t – the trebled plink of a church piano long past tuning, the lone woman’s longing voice meant for someone else. She quotes, from a place I’d never seen, “I’d stay in the garden with him / though the night around me be falling / but he bids me go through the voice of woe.”

“I just remember the wind.”

---

(vindictive dusters: pt2)

This is why I write about Anya – the night I felt the weight of her hand on my sweatered arm. It was a simple gesture, I remind myself, not that, the other thing. But it lingered, resting a little longer than the conversations or the convictions that led us there.

Oh, Anya, I felt absolutely nothing for the first time.

---

It all started simply enough, if one can call a missionary date simple. Drive, park, knock, drive, park, door, gaze, order, wait, proselytize. Happens all the time, at least it does now.

“I finished my assessment last night.”

(Why did I start here, not Philemon or Hosea – the slave he didn’t want or the love he couldn’t leave?)

“And?”

“………”

(What else could I say?)

“Witness A., have you ever held on to something, really held?”

(No.)

“………”

“………when this life of firsts becomes nexts and lasts.”

“………”

(vindictive dusters: pt1)

All the signs were there. Amazing, he thought, ten years after Passage and they still try to get away.

They never do.

“The real cases, like this one, looked pretty much like, well, this one.”

He was muttering to the to the lonely ficus strangulensis in the foyer again. Note the scuffs and ring of newly-fallen leaves. Recently moved. He made a mental note to check the moisture content after they gave him the packet.

Their first stop, after the Investigator secured the location, would be the bookcase – for the Intellectuals, -cases, you know, plural. Not that he really needed to wait. In ten years, there had never been a Subject present when he arrived.

“All clear,” Inspector T. declared.

(Something like that, at least. He wasn’t listening.)

“Witness? Witness A., come on. We have four more after this and they have the pair waiting for Judgment.”

(Cut through the haze of a six hour drive and half as much sleep.)

“Witness!”

“Oh, what? Right. On to the bookcases?” (He knew the answer.)

The shelves looked like a trucker’s mouth, with gaps where books should still be. God only knows what cavity-ridden volumes were taken (Austin? Self-help? Or, gasp, Left Behind?). The slender canines of censored Nabokov and slicing incisors of black market Hemon were, of course, ignored. He removed the Witness Form and took note.

Walking through the living room towards the kitchen, he saw another mottled plant – bromeliad? – filled with hastily-scooped dirt. The vase sat on a hillock of what was missed. Another sign.

Next, always next, was the kitchen. How to describe the scent? Hints of scummed porcelain, with a top-note of overripe banana. Why, the enticing aromas of Hungry Man and day-old Nescafe practically clung to his coat!

He decided to take the inventory quickly. Cookbooks? No. Cooking utensils? Partial (ex. chef’s knife present, but no spatulas). Plates? Yes (paper).

Then he stopped. There it stood – the Most Important Appliance, Oracle and All-Around Pretty Good Indicator. Ah, the refrigerator: former home of very important personal items. That’s where the fights usually began – who gets the picture of XX at the fountain or the popsicle-stick-framed whateveritwasXXscribbled?

This particular model was a low-cost, almond-shade fridge without, he noted, automatic ice dispenser or in-door filtered water spigot. Speaks volumes, really.

The side of the fridge was splattered misted with the remains of breakfasts, brunches, lunches, suppers, dinners, and any number of other to-be-named meals. He could make out the shapes and sizes of missing pictures, notes and magnetic souvenirs, all of which he dutifully noted in the margins of his Witness Form.

(An aside – he knew this would get him Reported, the taking of notes outside the perimeters of the assigned Witness Form. For example, he added the following beside the Bookcase(s), Living Room section:

Dustless trails lead to
bookless slots. A vindictive
duster never leaves.

But, honestly, we all have our little rebellions, don’t we? For another example, he lost himself in work the previous Saturday, the clock’s midnight warning startling him midsentence. And you know what? He finished that sentence. In fact, he finished the entire paragraph. On the Holy Day.)

(a fragment)

“We need no introduction,” he says, yawning. (It’s the moonless, starless, blackless nights. Duct-tape and a team of Chinese seamstress’ couldn’t keep the curtains closed. Of course, this is a common plot point for business travelers – he’s neither.)

The geography of the place made him want to conquer something, anything really.

-