Made in the shade

It was a crappy day.

too hot for sales.

no one on the sunny side

wanted bone and turquoise earrings.

The season was nearly over,

dead til after all the turkey

and pumpkin pie put the millions

in their masses flat on their asses.

One woman pawed

the merchandise

pinned on the black velvet

covered board.

Try it on he said.

looks nice with your eyes he lied.

Not that the necklace didn't.

it was just his standard line.

I'll let you have it for five.

I don't know, she said.

Make it four, he replied.

Okay, I'll take it.

Will you fasten it for me?

Sure, turn around.

She smelled like sandalwood

and oranges.

She felt his breath on the fine hairs
on the back of her neck and shuddered.

His fingers slipped

and the necklace

fell on the sidewalk.

Sorry. sorry.

they exclaimed together.

He picked up the necklace,

held his breath this time.

There. Pointed to a small mirror

mounted on his board.

What do you think?

It's nice, she said without looking

in the mirror and handed him a five.

He pushed her hand away.

No charge today.

For once he told the truth.

It really did match her sightless eyes.

Thanks she said and turned

and tapped her way to the shade.

Dust

They smiled and traded knowing nods

as they discussed how some particular code or brand

dominated their chosen market space.

And I remembered my mother's stories

about living in a grain elevator

when the sand blew from the place

where she was born -Muleshoe Texas-

to Oklahoma City.

And how they crammed five kids,

two changes of clothes,

some pots and pans,

a hammer, a saw and a hoe,

into a drive-away Buick to be delivered

to some doctor out in Pasadena

before they headed over the Grapevine

to Visalia.

And those guys waiting at the corner

for the light to change.

In their scuffed shoes and rumpled slacks,

and their cultivated week-old whiskers

and their hundred thousand dollar debts

had no sense of the difference

between justice and revenge.

And I want to see the oaks

that shaded the bronze doughboy

in the downtown Visalia park

beside the quonset hut tossed up in '42,

when that was the most expedient means

for small town civic buildings.

And it made everybody feel

like they were participating in the war.

And when the war was over

and Mom was riding

on the back of lowslung Harleys

with the guys who had returned

from Okinawa or Palermo

with their souvenirs and G.I. bills,

getting their thrills

on the dusty valley roads.

And the sky glimpsed through the oaks

was warm and glowed with the hope

of post war prosperity and the pink tinge

of sunset washed over the pastures

and the raisin fields, and the bronze soldier

in the park on Main Street.

Walk. The signal lit up in green

counted down from fifteen.

The guys looked up from their phones

and headed for the taco truck

discussing brand and code

and market domination.

tomato sun

Monday eroded into dusk.

The fat tomato sun

bled into a horizon

blurred by the ship smoke

of six southbound freighters.

The rye'd been dry

since the first week of July,

August was past,

and the September sky

was filled with the reek

of tarweed blooms and distant fire.

Samuel gazed through the haze

at the half dozen ice tankers

bearing the last frozen calves

of the Arctic glaciers to the thirsty few

who could afford to drink fossil water

behind the high walls of of their enclaves.

His crew of Ford Mark IV automatons

had harvested his last ton of tomatoes.

(The best thing about machines

is that they are incapable of being bored)

But their indifference to emotion

sometimes seemed more cruel

than the hottest/coldest rage.

The fire

A burning broom

sweeps through the pines

and douglas firs

the meadows

and the shacks,

the rusting Chevy pickup

up on cinder blocks

since the summer of '69.

Boils the beavers

in their ponds,

roasts the squirrels

racing through the crowns

of ponderosa pines

dry as last year's

Christmas trees in March

flaming like a torch.

Incinerates the pair

of rocking chairs

that hold a thousand memories

of sunset views

and berry pie-smeared nephews

running barefoot on the porch

while the crickets commenced

to sing their evening chorus.

That straw-haired kid

who put that Chevy up

on the cinder blocks,

promised that he'd be back

to fix it up as soon as

he finished his tour.

He never made it back

any closer than Seattle

and the odd holiday or birthday

for a few hours that passed too fast.

She sits on one of those green

scallop-shaped metal lawn chairs

in the safety of the valley

with a box of photographs resting on her lap

watching the infernal tongues devour

what she'd assumed somehow was eternal.

Legacy

Do the ghosts that lurk beneath

the herringbone brick sidewalks

while most of Vientiane sleeps

drift up from the mossy gaps

and linger in the sweet night scent

of plumeria trees?

The crewcut spooks

who knocked back brews

in the bistros, bars, and discos,

between their bouts of listening

to scratchy radio transmissions

from the dark and humid forests.

They left the gift of unexploded cluster bombs

sown by fleets of B-52s from 30,000 feet,

sipped champagne while death

rained on the Plain of Jars:

seeds that continue to germinate and harvest

the arms and legs of the grandchildren

of the Secret War never mentioned

by our vaunted statesmen.

Now a hooker sits sidesaddle

on a silent scooter parked

outside a darkened temple

waiting for a midnight customer.

The war ghosts look down at her

from the branches of the temple trees,

the leaves remember the Mekong breeze.

She wears perfume scented with plumeria

and sends a slim stack of many-zeroed currency

each month to her one-legged grandmother.

Rain falls on that other City of Angels

Tumescent cumuli

redden the western sky.

Melted by the sun,

the rain waits for an hour,

then dumps a full day’s load

on the heads of shoppers

and commuters headed home,

damp and grateful

for the rain-slick streets,

the weeks of dust slaked

and washed happily gurgling,

down any available drain or hole.

Lightning knits the bosom

of the sky to the terraces

and glassy towers below.

The chrome and jungled yards,

the million-engined city beast,

suckles the monsoon milk

that vanishes before

the midnight clocks have struck

and thirsty dawn returns.

The ragged and the chic

Stories of the ragged,

portraits of the chic,

hard guys, whose youth

was boiled off their faces

by the street.

The girls and women,

who present themselves

as meat.

One who i'll name Jasmine

-for convenience sake

sports a micro miniskirt

and high-heeled silver sandals.

Just above her slender ankle,

a tracking device is locked.

Who is at the other end of that?

police or immigration?

She doesn't try to hide

her electronic leash

from the public eye,

her confidence, supreme.

Jasmine checks her lipstick

with the camera of her phone

waiting for the walk signal to change,

ignores the lewd

suggestions from the hard guy

perched on the empty fountain

drinking from a bottle

scarcely hidden

by a fast food paper bag.

She struts across the street,

off to some appointment

up the hill, where the noon shift

at the strip clubs will soon begin.

The hard guy takes a final swig

and drops his bottle on the sidewalk

bends down to see what he can see

up Jasmine's skirt for free.