even though she knew

clay heart,

cardboard face.

coat hanger bones

and chewing gum sinews.

cerulean persona.

as posted.

slippery encounters

in the twenty-third floor

broom closet

memorialized

with stains.

she knew 

he was a liar.

the stacks

I'm in the stacks saving books

and magazines headed for the shredder:

A short history of Lollapalooza County

Butterflies of Argentina,

Radio Play Digest of 1939.

I keep them in six self-storage units,

shelves and boxes, floor to ceiling.

All the yellowed words and pages

even Google has abandoned.

On Saturdays I hit the stalls and canopies

at all the region's flea markets and yard sales,

scrounging Look, Life, and Fortune magazines.

instruction manuals for obsolete appliances,

service station road maps, faded travel brochures.

My scanner is a time machine.

for rendering the ephemera:

the orphaned playbills,

going out of business coupons,

twenty-five cent detective story grit.

..............and so........

At three a.m. in August '53,

I'm on the Santa Fe Southwest Chief

passing through Topeka on my way to LA

to catch a liner bound for Bora Bora.

Wearing the straw fedora I found in the margin

of page 98 in the May '52 issue of Argosy.

With Lana Turner cuddled against my shoulder.

She's sleepy from all the oysters and champagne we swilled

down in the diner. and she's oh-so-grateful

since I rescued her from the Russian saboteur

who had tied her to the bed in that flop house in Chicago.

She whispers some intriguing possibilities in my ear

and we got a lot of miles before we roll into Union Station.

Lights are flashing red at some lonely crossing,

and then......

the scanner's whine awakens me,

and I send the file of Argosy page 98, May 1952

to the server in the closet.

It's 3:47 and time to grab a couple hours of shut eye

before it's time to head back to the stacks
in the basement of the library.

No wait, it's Saturday!

Got a few more hours to sleep and then, the flea market.

where I hope to see, Lana, that semi wilted flower child

from the sixties who has that booth with old copies

of Life and Look and Fortune, and brochures

for South Pacific cruises.

She winked at me last week, perhaps she'd like to share a drink,

take a trip in my time machine and explore the possibilities.

star circles

before the black

becomes the grey,

the tatters of night

bleed into day.

in that neutral

absence, before

it renders the red

with many names,

the stars,

trace their

nightly arcs.

it takes too long

to see rotation,

but you can

feel them move.

if you let yourself

get slow enough.

dawn

bruised peach sky

before the sunrise

his curled body

lies on a bench

boots untied,

the laces dangling,

a pink blanket

with cartoon puppies

drapes everything

but the boots.

sunrise on drumm street

in the big fountain, drained for repairs

a well-dressed chinese woman

wearing latex gloves and rubber boots,

walks carefully inside,

picking up dimes and nickels

off the slimy concrete.

on a bed of flattened cardboard

in a doorway, under a filthy

off-white blanket, two people quietly fuck.

the wild parrots scream

in the naked poplars across the street.

a thin man, in stain-blotched jeans,

stands at the foot of an outdoor stairway

immobilized, and growling.

he holds a green cellophane

candy wrapper in one hand,

reading the ingredients
and barking and making

no move to climb the steps.

untitled #59

if i had a million words

they'd still blow away like dust,

each second chained

to the last one and the next one,

moments impaled on a collector's pin,

scrutinized and recorded in careful notes

that crawl like a snail beneath the ivy

leaving an iridescent sheen

until the rain comes, if it ever will.

the streets will still be carnivals

and butcher shops,

i'll keep casting a hook for the moon.

the mulberry trees

where i found my mother weeping

will flourish, then fall and rot.

i might still imagine a table

with two cups that sit,

a drop of coffee drying on one

where it ran down from the lip,

and a fly wandering

near a bowl of raw sugar

exploring a pale crumbling lump

like she'd found heaven.

and those aren't

my hoofprints

in the mud.

sunrise moonset

I don't remember ever

seeing an orange moon set

hanging just to the left of

the mountain princess,

the sleeping one the men who

kept watches on chains in their vests,

made up the story about.

They said it was an ancient tale

that belonged to the people

who had lived there

before they removed them

with guns, disease, and legislation.

This winter's dirty air

tinged the moon with pink

an ornamental flair

to ease the stink

of sentimental inventions:

a blend of Pocahontas,

and Sleeping Beauty.

a Victorian notion of maidenhood,

and the sweet afterglow

of expropriation.