|
Who Does She Hope To Be?
She looks for a family in mirrors, haircuts,
in grains of salt; belly doubles as aesthetic
distance, marriage broker --
pregnancy can end smoking, drinking, giving
herself away to the night's prizefighter.
"Once ya hit bottom . . . there's only up," they say
but can't she see that once she pops up in China,
there's sky, then space?
It's a long way to the night's cratered pendulum,
whose gravity shall surely fling her careering
towards the edges, hope like quasars,
tremendously bright, plausible, true as myth:
out there must be a watchful eye, a dash
of nebulous reward for braving extremes,
second grace perhaps, interception of an answered prayer.
Each gasp held in passing ecstasy,
every painted shiver of the act,
libido graving placebo into the interstice;
these scenes give way to greater interregnums:
couriers mistaken for knights, love for a midwife,
all the mechanics of despair a calculus for conception.
In the tow of her best intentions,
her Grecian urn of a body, like plunder in hard times,
bears the burden of function, of underlying purpose,
intrinsic value realized in form if not in appearances;
takers come and go, the auction in her eyes
without reserve.
2 February MMIV
I sit at the counter
in the Hudson
Diner off Barrow.
Red and white
checkered tablecloth
in the booth
marked "Four guests
or more only."
The ear-mouth piece with
the gay Latino jars
about the Greek
waitress and the old
man in the corner
booth. I want
to punch him
in the mouth.
He complains to his
phone about an erro-
neous ambulance bill.
The chicken pot pie
has green beans, tastes
like paper. I'd kill
for his steak & eggs
which he moans
isn't London broil.
He tries to talk
to me as I try to ignore
him. He came
to this country to find
a place to park,
a home to settle
into habits, and found
the shiny things
he expected
and the anchors
that come with them.
And I've always been
stuck here, pissing in
the wind.
Ismael Ricardo Archbold resides and works in Austin TX. A graduate of the University of Chicago and the Bennington Writing Seminars, he maintains a blog, Guide for the Careering and plays in the band " Coma in Algiers" . (February 2007)
Close this screen and the menu will appear. If frames-incompatible, Click Lunarosity