ᓭི༏ᓯྀ

The Heart’s Graveyard Shift

I lose faith in my left hand not because my dog Echo’s eloped with ignis fatuus into pinewoods or that my limp’s unhealed after 13 years. What can go wrong goes wrong, & between loves an empty space defines itself like a stone’s weight helps it to sink into earth. My devil-may-care attitude returns overnight, the bagwoman outside the 42nd Street Automat is now my muse. I should know by heart the schema, routes A & B, points where we flip coins, heads or tails, to stay alive. Between loves I crave danger; the assassin’s cross hairs underline my point of view.

                                            Between loves, with a pinch of madness tucked under the tongue, a man might fly off the handle & kill his best friend over a penny. His voice can break into butterflies just as the eight ball cracks across deep-green felt, growing silent with something unsaid like a mouth stuffed with nails. He can go off his rocker, sell the family business for a dollar, next morning pull a Brink’s job & hijack a 747. He can hook up with a woman in silver spike heels who carries a metallic blue guitar or he can get right with Jesus through phenobarbital.

                                           Between loves I sing all night with the jukebox: “Every man’s gotta cry for himself.” I play chicken with the Midnight Special rounding Dead Man’s Curve, enthralled by the northern lights & machinery of falling stars. Internal solstice, my body, a poorly rigged by-pass along Desperado Ave., taking me away from myself. Equilibrium’s whorehouses. Arcades scattered along the eastern seaboard. I search dead-colored shells for clues, visions, for a thread of meat, untelling interior landscapes. A scarecrow dances away with my shadow. Between loves I could stand all day at a window watching honeysuckle open as I make love to the ghosts smuggled inside my head.

If you're one of seven Downfalls, up in your kingdom Of mulberry leaves, there are men Betting you aren't worth a bullet, That your skin won't tan into a good Wallet. As if drugged in the womb & limboed in a honeyed languor, By the time you open your eyes A thousand species have lived & died. Born on a Sunday Morning, with old-world algae In your long hair, a goodness Disguised your two-toed claws Bright as flensing knives. In this Upside-down haven, you're reincarnated As a fallen angel trying to go home.

Frederick Carter (1883–1967), “The Dragon of the Alchemists”

engraved on wood by W.M. Quick, 1936