Mornin Quickie

He wore suits as think as calluses and had a certain bird-poise. Waspy stillness.

He knew that night in London was not black or even Egyptian blue but red, with a texture like leopard print, bad coffee.

Once he cut loose and shouted a demon call to prayer to the cement quadruplexes, iron heiresses,

the perplexing republic of drunken city traders; but you don't make money when you cut loose.

And this guy, he made money.

Played his way on the pulsing magnificence of the city,

Hmmmmm, drags at the back of a throat and becomes mmmhmm, when three men huddle around a car, admitting some smaller defeat, while not quite admitting the emergence of digital

parts means this won't be solved by ratchet alone. No one is happy to learn what an afternoon of chafed knuckles, metal on skin, no longers solves. What can't

be pulled from the steel tangle under a hood. It's as though they found the wrench that could set free a bike from its training wheels only to discover their daughter has had a driver's license for years.

I clap the man at the center of this trio on his shoulder, not quite hard enough to shake loose a cigarette dangling almost acrobatically from his lips and say,

I'll just take it to a dealership and be done. I say it as if this is not a huddle—like I'm not a team manager plucking the ball from my pitcher's glove early in a game that falls near the wane of an otherwise solid career.

Detroit's building'em like robots now, he concedes, slams the hood and rattles the chassis. He's probably right, considering the clank of metal closing on metal,

but I still can't help thinking of how much the frame is like my frame. The mystery of my Chrysler's right side not responding—silent speaker, head lamp dead, window sealed shut, frozen power door lock—is no more

mystifying than my left ear's limited frequency range or the left eye I'm now told is blind by a doctor who huddles over me to assess some unknown damage.

I am the dog you put to sleep, as you like to call the needle of oblivion, come back to tell you this simple thing: I never liked you—not one bit

When I licked your face, I thought of biting off your nose. When I watched you toweling yourself dry, I wanted to leap and unman you with a snap.

I resented the way you moved, your lack of animal grace, the way you would sit in a chair to eat, a napkin on your lap, knife in your hand.

I would have run away, but I was too weak, a trick you taught me while I was learning to sit and heel, and—greatest of insults—shake hands without a hand.

I admit the sight of the leash would excite me but only because it meant I was about to smell things you had never touched.

You do not want to believe this, but I have no reason to lie. I hated the car, the rubber toys, disliked your friends and, worse, your relatives.

The jingling of my tags drove me mad. You always scratched me in the wrong place. All I ever wanted from youwas food and fresh water in my metal bowls.

While you slept, I watched you breathe as the moon rose in the sky. It took all my strength not to raise my head and howl.

Now I am free of the collar, the yellow raincoat, monogrammed sweater, the absurdity of your lawn, and that is all you need to know about this place

     what to do with this knowledge      that our living is not guaranteed?

Perhaps one day you touch the young branch of something beautiful. & it grows & grows despite your birthdays & the death certificate, & it one day shades the heads of something beautiful or makes itself useful to the nest. Walk out of your house, then, believing in this. Nothing else matters.

All above us is the touching of strangers & parrots, some of them human, some of them not human