[an excerpt from the short story "Homonymous D." (for Bob Carson)]


     "No, you go first!" Anne said, holding her poem to her pearls. Out of my
oversize wallet-daytimer came a companion, a recent poem of my own. I didn't
remember when we had started talking about poetry. We'd been drinking to the
point where topics were arriving capriciously.
     I said 'okay'. My audience included Gary and one of the waiters. Managing
to stop our host from delivering a diatribe on the number of unpublished poets
in New York City, I read in a reflective mood which largely obtained my own
self-re-seeing of how attracted I was to Anne:

 " House of Mirrors

 He had to disappear among whispers, vapor
 White as winter in the frigid fear where
 Slogans halt lovers, and the poets, princes made
 Pariahs fasting for the word, become double remove
 In slick Times Square telemarketing brothels:
 Sick junkie beside him shivers a stuttered: '...aluminum siding
 Is good! But Mrs...Mrs...' misses his shot again in crumbling

 Soot tower -- ER doctor disdains street specimens with carny tent urge-
 Endless gun oil eye injection panic splay head gyrhetorical hydras'
 Obscene combustion engine auto erotic grease gutter rod roar
 War whore of Queens! 'Zat ol' Bill Burroughs hid good
 In the very last broken phone booth 'atta here, man? So far
 Away from Butler Street there's two dogs humping outside this
 Terminal Bar amidst the busted glass climax of some dead vehicle...

 Bartender/barker slaps the counter with his cane, motioning
 The poet towards a barstool near the picture window
 With heard-in the-stomach sideshow metallic
 Quirk of nasal jawvoice come-on:
 '...mistakes of nature all, and all of them ALIVE
 ALIVE! ALIVE! ALIVE!' "

     "You wrote that, Owen?" Anne said in a quiet voice, "It's really... I
feel... excellent; wow! those painful images really penetrate a person. I'd
love to know more of your things...sometime. But now I doubt you're going to
think much of my little opus..."
     Gary said, "Yes, come on, next!"
     She was surrounded so, after only minor excuse-making, her fingers went to
the Braille dots on the paper she had been holding. Her voice caressed the words.
Caressed her own words:

 " palm

 ...and then wild and stagnant
 i saw the pretty songs
 all along a trail out of doors
 giving at intervals
 a view; a short term memory.

 until I came to a blind beach,
 where waves like lashes were heavy-lidded,
 all their dreams long since removed;
 and I, one of those tidal designs
 escaped at night on the shore,
 your voice, filling the water
 my own eyes.

 grasses, all the named bodies;
 and spun tales of a woody lore;
 invisible heroes who leave soporific tracks --
 transcend every arabesque of metaphor or air to you:
 a moment, a good story.

 here is my tree. Hold on...
 both hands soft enclosures on wet sand,
 make no tracks -- rather,
 cut across
 paths; watch the travelers in their tale

 making the heavy early earth again --
 thought itself --
 inexplicable iridescent moss
 i lie back on like some future
 song i need you to sing for me."

     Gary and I had competed with each other to find the right words with which
to admire Anne's poem.
     I said it was a word sculpture of organic existentialism, but had no idea
what that might mean and took another sip of my sherry, a bit befuddled. We
finally gave up.
     Anne could write. And, I discovered, she was a person who blushed prettily,
too. One of the waiters even came over and kissed her hand, complimenting her
in a thick Italian accent.
     "Okay, wordsmiths," Gary said in a challenging voice, having missed his
earlier chance, "a couple of serious writers like you ought to know the two
words in the English language that contain all the vowels once and in order.
Though, hey, don't worry if you can't, we'll just pretend that it's the wine
and the sherry making you moderately forgetful."
      I said, "Well I'd really have to be facetious to try and tell you we've
been abstemious for the last six hours, wouldn't I?" His face looked for
something to do. Anne made a noise of delicate surprise and asked him if we
were official writers now. Genuflecting with his Times newspaper to his stomach,
he said with comical pomp that certainly we were, and then turned to fill a
drink order from his wait staff. I used that opportunity to tell Anne I'd
already had another Sphinx put me through the same drill at The Algonquin
Blue Room a couple months ago. She giggled and jabbed me in the ribs.
     When he sidled over to her, this time Anne was on the offensive. "'Okay'
to you, Game Master Gary, what are the two phrases in English that rhyme with
Thelonious Monk?"


© W.D. Brindle
 ________________
Home: www.gobi-igloo.com
Work: www.esperancesp.com