In the night Matilda
strikes a kitchen match.
It flares; she guides it
to a twist of cotton
in a cylinder of wax.
A blue-and-yellow thumb of light,
stuttering in the draft,
dispatches a troupe of shadows
to gambol on the walls.
In the B&O, the sun
cuts the floor with silhouettes.
Out in the summer day,
cool pockets of shade,
a blinding windshield.
Fogs of breath on the glass,
dust and hand prints,
scratches and paint,
hazy streaks of grease.
Shadows on the carpet
move too slow to notice
unless you look away,
and some time later, look again.
You’ll find a bitter toxin
slippered on your breath.
Light floods every sense
and then goes out for coffee.
That to which you are allergic
closes your airway like a vault
for future builders to bulldoze
as if your memory were too vulgar
for good people to remember.
I greet my friends in the dark
where the dead and living
occupy the same conspiracy.
Acquaintances and ancestors
dance in a circle on dirty feet.
Characters float above the pages;
my sole contributor whose word
is like an infant in an incubator
whose seals are starting to crack.
Medicines in orange bottles
leap out and sort themselves
and tell me when to swallow.
An implement sharpened to
the breadth of a fingernail
in the skin of a parking attendant
napping in his kiosk.
The rebirth of disco
in the men’s room.
The last calypso
there in the spot
on the floor.
Here is your crack
in your engine block.
Banners from the festival
marks of black waffle soles
rain streaks the outlines
strips hang ragged
from teeth.
Jesse Minkert has made picture frames, painted signs, cut patterns for a foundry, made wood carvings, installed hot tubs, and fabricated disco dance floors. His carvings, paintings, and sculptures have been displayed in galleries in Texas, California, and Washington State. He lives in Seattle where he is the executive director of the non-profit corporation Arts and Visually Impaired Audiences. He writes short stories, microfiction, novels, and poetry. His writing has appeared on literary websites, in magazines, anthologies, dance performances, and recordings on radio and CDs. In 2008, Wood Works Press published a collection of Minkert's microstories and poems titled Shortness of Breath & Other Symptoms. Each summer for fifteen years Minkert has taught radio theater techniques to visually impaired teenagers.
ISSUE:
S U M M E R
2012
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