Did he duck down from the window,
already listening for the echo?
Eyes closed to checkmate the huge
unsubtle sun, its shrunken double
burning the inside of his lids,
black disc with its fringe of baby-hair,
running the oxide range from ocher
up through roan to plum.
The ghost in the mirror gave shape to things
he wished to set aside, world laid bare
as a short-timer’s bedroom,
a trio of pleasures scrubbed from the list,
now so unhappy in its brief perfection.
Black thread to bisect hill and sky,
to stitch the burning bush and the escaping girl,
with the illusion of gravity, pinpoint knots
to keep both singe and Trilby from floating free.
He battered his jeweler’s hammer
on the anxious tin, seven blows apiece
for every line of slanting rain,
eleven more for winter and good luck.
A square of chamois to swab the humming metal,
and something else not quite so near to hand.
How much had he borrowed
to repay the greedy echo, its checklist
like a child’s kiss-and-tell?
Needle-nose to prise a centimeter back,
to flush corruption with a mist, a squirt,
a confident blast of soda and compressed air.
Any fool could barter down the cost
of stumbler’s red, it took a slattern’s skill
to negotiate the curves of wedding white,
veined with soft neurotic blue.
Troubling himself for a Turkish silk,
one match to light a twelve minute stretch.
Safe within his cowl of smoke,
the neighborhood bayed and hushed
towards him, a ramp and fire escape
rounding out the temporal Ripper’s
point of view.
A mouse ran headlong
through a gleam of opened window,
a slammed door barked a flap of paper loose,
tar peeling from the mouse-rich lilac wall,
and one fat raindrop quivered in mid-air
as though pleased with the pulse of its own
plump beauty.
He heard her restlessness before she saw him,
his left hand trembled as he prepared the way,
unhosed her image on a pillow
smooth as green mint,
a glow that startled them both
before she melted and his time was up.
Shuttered at the knees and boxed
in the frame of her kitchenette window,
Trilby posed for him from across their shared alley,
hair teased like a bullring transvestite’s,
lolly-white tee-shirt and pixie see-through,
her raunch of pubic hair brown as the James River
on a mild midsummer’s day.
Her smile,
when caught, exploded into laughter
that rang the alley free of shadows and she
turned round to moon him with distraction,
before completing the revolution
of a doublejointed lift and strip,
placing a civil bid on the finished product.
The ache recovering behind his eyes
slipped like a zipper down his spine
and settled in his balls, which for art’s sake
he kept on his side the easel, left-hand fingers
spidering the wrapping paper, right fist
bouncing like a rabbit, charcoal and
insinuating smudge cartooning Trilby into shape.
He knew exceeding well the purpose naked Trilby served.
A box of samples thumbed
and dusted into order,
pretty bits to make a whole.
As to the nature of her soul
he took as little interest now as then,
when the parade of ghosts moved on
to haunt some kinder heart,
leaving him to drown his momentary sorrow
in a Klagenfurt stein of tears.
The distance of an alley permits dissection,
the piecemeal interrogation of cloud-
gray eyes and gallow-teasing mane,
of a wild child’s heart-shaped ass,
sweet compass tempting the magnetic pull
of his jabbery charcoal nub.
Her smile had divested him
of all unworthy thoughts,
his scratchings made machine.
One-handed he could spindle the collage,
shake free some little memory from its context.
The first, who saw round corners,
sidestepped silence
with a matador’s glide and freeze ;
the next, who telegraphed forgiveness
with bell, book, and candle,
annotated each charitable penetration
down to hook, line, and sinker ; the last,
who made a monthly ritual of acts
he hoped remained illegal,
lest the thrill be lessened
and a miracle made commonplace.
Trilby wasn’t Trilby anymore.
Was gone.
Down to some red world
of high-tops and Delaunay
where damage imagined was not the same
as damage done, where even the apes of God
could rest from nervous plunder
and applaud the spectacle of Beatrix Potter
riding shotgun to Boadicea’s fury,
chariot spokes spiraling out
the afterspray of wolves’ blood.
The echo sounded on the count of three.
Hammer, needle, scissors, pump,
paper, ruler, shot glass, spool,
pin-up, blinder, lipstick, plug,
thermos, hamper, blanket, bride,
and all the five-and-dime resentments
that had weighed his intricate galleon to the waterline
flown through his fingers to stud the margins
of his far-from-over daydream,
the collage whose theme was there’s-no-
place-like-home or we’ve-come-a-long-way-baby
or humor-me-darling-for-old-time’s-sake.
He felt another echo coming on,
a firefly trapped in an inverted jar,
batting once, then twice against the glass,
with a kiss none but he could hear.
He stroked the skittish head of mercy,
let power smooth the wrinkle in the cloth.
Which one of many fogbound ports
had been the one where some badger-bearded
customs officer had teased him with a riddle,
the only proper answer another spell in prison?
His name began with an Sss and ended with an eye,
his sense of humor had rollicked many
a Transylvanian bedsit, his handling of that Duke’s
cross-eyed daughter still had them chuckling
from Bucharest to Kensington.
If she were to leave him, he would be all alone.
Et tu, Trilby?
And now she had left him and he was all alone,
excepting the audience of a hidden, melodramatic
mouse, and the latest girl creeping up the stairwell,
fresh white resume in her trembling hand.