Take this message: Eleni delivered
Woman pleased
Sometimes the deathwind
is in tow
the weight slides forward
into a near-miss miasma
of basic bone structure—to wit
the push and shove of
pulmonary suspiration—yet
again there’s hope,
the wait never as long
as it might be
always a doctor
in the house with fantastic
mustaches (Romanesque),
striated evidence
of former tattoos (a wilder
past life?) which
is all to speak of
the way this crowded moment
can fast-idle the mind,
wander driven even
in August’s stupid heat,
the phosphorous-wanting glare
of official waiting rooms,
squad car backseats,
the stockade holding tank . . .
Hence a small engine
of this life—for
better or worse—at
once from a distance
(or in retrospect, watched
from imaginary distance)
can somehow amuse, fully qualify
as experience, mis-
remembered nostalgia (didn’t
she say it was forever?) till at
last we are annoyed, bored,
then frightened—impatient to
be elsewhere—though it
usually means alone again
and nothing to do…
this blood unstilled,
that fucking wind behind us.
Like None Other by Alexander Lowell
