That woman is not my mother,
way, way too young for that,
but she leaves pieces of sweaters in my mailbox.
Warns me all the time to watch out
for morticians who drink a lot of wine,
quote Bela Lugosi interviews
and wear vintage superhero masks on dates.

And I thought my teenage years were weird,
starving to court aggressive discourtesy
and constantly like wondering if you locked the hotel room door
after you’ve already gotten in the shower.

She might even be younger than me.

The thing is that we travel in different circles.
She takes a cab. I get around by bus,
or I make arrangements with the friend of a bitter friend,
and I hope that this one doesn’t have a hammer
and a nail for each one of my toes.

We are brutalized by different circles. I’m guessing.
I mean, I know that’s true for my life. I’m guessing
where it concerns her.

I get home without meaning or wanting to,
and I can’t even pay a dancer to lick my wounds.
She staggers down the hallway with a different purse
from the one she left with.

I heard her give directions to the driver once,
to a nightclub that was torn down in 1942.
I know. Because I went to the subterranean outlet mall,
bought some weird cowboy boots,
bought that Japanese beer that makes me feel successful,
outwitted some local heavies
and poured through photographs in the basement of the Empathetic Library.

You can see the nightclub in this one black and white picture.
It’s fuzzy.
There’s a ghostly glow that seems to be coming
from somewhere nearby, and I think the shadows
might have been eating people whole back then.

They obscure a maddening amount of detail,
and I actually do imagine she might know
something about that.

I can be taken in by the right kind of wild eyes.

I’ll ask her about it someday.
I’ll tell her that I’ve come up with something
whimsically disturbing from all those scraps of sweaters.

She seems to recognize me,
but that’s not exactly an impression I can trust.

03/26/2012

Posted on 03/27/2012
Copyright © 2024 Gabriel Ricard