leaves in a breeze

Leaves in a Breeze

Garbage cans frantically rolled around, emptying their contents.

The history of economics had only one scholar worth trashing.

That he wanted a halfpound of and he got a quart of sweetmilk

and I want you to do it right away. I want you to check two phone numbers and

hammers of pain make it hard to get out my cellphone and dial

the warmth of it against the coming winter. He watched a cornpicker

rave about storming an impregnable hill no matter what the cost

with unfashionable hips and a long chestnut braid swinging down

into the dark for some midnight contest to begin

other variations, and he really didn’t enjoy that stuff so much.

Pirate, it’s called, a semi-chic, once-hot, now barely-hanging-on

suggestion of movement, a dull sluggish wrinkling where the mainstream

slammed the door and he heard the key turning in the lock.

I have no need to push others out of my way--one look at my white

punishment for something I don’t remember now or even then,

long after the crack of the rifle had died in the lee of the mountain,

involved violence. He liked to plan things ahead. And something like tonight,

chosen precisely for the way it shines against the white stucco of the

road beyond a stretch of sorrowful-looking trees,

an apparition created whole out of nothing and set upon

the way to a solution of that man’s woe. His reward?

My imagination, a monster without a face.