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eohippus all contents copyright 2007 max carmichael | why eohippus? bio contact | |
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arts portfolio: visual arts music writing events design | |
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writing: pamphlet literature | back next | |
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...All eyes on the bottle as she brings it over pinched between her thumb and forefinger.
Like monks they attend her with eager silence in the conical flood of the hanging lamp,
and the wicked bite of her spiked heels ricochets off the dark masonry walls of their
cloistering. When she stops to face him sheathed in her whore's dress of funereal satin,
she lifts out the dropper, poising it calmy over his glass of water, and she pierces him
with her gaze and smiles in the shadow of her broadbrimmed witch's hat. He raises his
eyes, she narrows hers, and while he strains for a deeper look inside her she squeezes
the seven drops of liquid opium into his glass, one by one. Happy Thanksgiving, Wilbur. She watches the brown drops decomposing downward through the water in tiny clumps and hreads. When he drinks, she swivels round the circle like a roulette wheel, gliding to a stop in front of the dark girl with full lips. Following her into the high hall of swirling drums, wheeze of pipes in a far wind, sweet eucalyptus on the air, candles ranked around the rugged walls. To dance among the eucalyptus boughs strewn about the floor, to dance faster, taking up the branches and running with them, leaves trailing like long thin fingers. The drums and pipes and chanting, the flickering of the candles, the blur of bodies, boys and girls running in a fine fog of sweet gum, and in their midst she's twirling on her bare feet with her long hair fanning out. |
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1997 |
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...The guard, more gentle now, guides them into the loudest and brightest cell along the
wall. A long trestle table down its center, bunks stacked three high along the walls.
Wib scans quickly around and sees every bunk is occupied. As is the table, with half a
dozen card games going. In a space ten feet wide at least fifty men are crowded, shouting,
laughing, whistling. No one even looks up as Wib and the Messenger find their own way
past the table to the end of the room. There alone is some space. A pool of waste water
spreads over the green floor, a stained toilet with no seat marooned at the back of it.
The cell's only spare mattresses are soaking in the pool. Wib finds one that's only half wet, drags it under the edge of the table, so he can get his head out of the floodlights. He crawls onto the mattress and curls up. Now all he can see is rows of knees. Black voices, Latino voices. Tubby, they charge you yet, man? Charge me hell, who says they got to charge me? Hold me here a week, send me down San Bruno a week, dump me on the street where they pick me up. Same old story, man. Happy Thanksgiving. Hey, they caught Rico up in Chico, man. Rico in Chico. No way, man. I seen Rico over on Fillmore last week. Headed south with the birds. Rico down in Tehachapi, man, movin' that fine Vietnamese. Ain't nobody can touch Rico. You stupid, homeboy. I know Rico. Rico finished with that shit. Rico father died, he gone straight. A deep growl, older. You know Rico, I know Rico. Everybody knows Rico. Rico the only man not here this week. Cut the cards, young man. Wib falls asleep, the lights buzz nd burn without relent, the games fly loudly on. |
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