Sunday, March 14, 2004
Belief in Mirrors -- draft 1
“Can I borrow some change?”
Carmody asks me with his eyes
Staring at me like televisions,
Or security cameras
With the whole store watching:
A rally without sound
A rape without words.
Choreographed quarters
Spill out of every woman’s mouth:
Speech practice in America,
Be late or be
Violated.
“You’re dreaming,”
Nab says in
My ear behind the counter,
“This man of chapter
Titles, nibbles of sound,
This phantom limb of the people,
Raising an insistent index
Finger, pointing the way
Toward stars
Or asterisks.”
We watch Carmody out of the convenience
Store with his girl,
Any girl,
And I run,
But Nab pushes me
Into the corner,
My gloves raised,
“You’re speaking to the screen
When you’re speaking to me,”
And our friendship is thin
Turning on a disc,
Or a dime.
And I am defeated,
I am sorry, Nab says,
Presidents never apologize.
We clean up and we follow
Carmody to the party
With his girl under the cover
Of sirens and nightsticks
Beating into blankets,
She stands beaten, and suddenly
Away from
Carmody, who believes in magic,
If magic was a mirror,
Something small,
Portable,
Hidden,
Which he would take to the next state,
And gaze into
At all times.
Carmody asks me with his eyes
Staring at me like televisions,
Or security cameras
With the whole store watching:
A rally without sound
A rape without words.
Choreographed quarters
Spill out of every woman’s mouth:
Speech practice in America,
Be late or be
Violated.
“You’re dreaming,”
Nab says in
My ear behind the counter,
“This man of chapter
Titles, nibbles of sound,
This phantom limb of the people,
Raising an insistent index
Finger, pointing the way
Toward stars
Or asterisks.”
We watch Carmody out of the convenience
Store with his girl,
Any girl,
And I run,
But Nab pushes me
Into the corner,
My gloves raised,
“You’re speaking to the screen
When you’re speaking to me,”
And our friendship is thin
Turning on a disc,
Or a dime.
And I am defeated,
I am sorry, Nab says,
Presidents never apologize.
We clean up and we follow
Carmody to the party
With his girl under the cover
Of sirens and nightsticks
Beating into blankets,
She stands beaten, and suddenly
Away from
Carmody, who believes in magic,
If magic was a mirror,
Something small,
Portable,
Hidden,
Which he would take to the next state,
And gaze into
At all times.
