In the slow lane of the swim
class I am swimming and ahead of me is the big girl who is
thrashing about in the narrow aisle. Filled with the
confidence of a fool I decide to pass the large body,
somehow settling upon a movement of
to-the-side-and-under-the-mass of the other water-bound
entity. Somewhere in my maneuver it all goes wrong, and two
legs, like two beautiful cured hams, meet the humanity of my
head with two pure blows, sending my life spinning to the
depths, at that moment realizing the four-foot limits of the
slow lane about which I’d forgotten, breathing needles of
wet chlorine, seeing what darkness looks like under the
world of four feet of water. And I, emerging from the
shallows shivering, look up to see a girl crying, poolside.
She cries, “my uncle has died, my uncle has died.”
[Some years after September 11]
In the back of the rattling bus
the air-conditioned wind bellows
towards our bodies.
A newspaper is being read two rows down:
DEEP SCARS CLOUD NEW YORK’S REVIVAL
without room for a breath.
In the back right corner a drag queen
quivers during cold air blasts,
her breasts without nipples, her muscular black legs
twitching in their place.
Two seats down, the crazy man with the
child’s mind and multicolored umbrella
balances the end of the bus upon his delicate self.
Their feet rest upon the serrated strips of the plastic floor,
amongst the steel poles like pillars buttressing
heaven and hell, separating our seats from the
walkway on the floor of the bus.
Some inches away a woman cradles a man,
his head being held in her fat arms
and they paint a scene of warm refuge before
the tinted crystal windows.
They fog from the outside.
DEEP SCARS CLOUD NEW YORK’S REVIVAL
the newspaper said.
It was a lovely landscape.
The canvass a bus’s carcass being
painted by resting transitory asses.