A man with bleeding hands
A man with bleeding hands at the back door of Out of the Closet
this morning asked me for the bride and groom figurines at the
top of my donation box to put on the grave of his recently married
sister. He was topless, wore skateboarder jeans and hid what was
left of his shrunken skin behind an eddy of venous blue tattoos.
Impulse almost succeeded in steering me clear of his sanguine arms.
But who was I, making a donation, to doubt him, to dismiss his story
and bracket him on account of his homelessness? I watched as he
inspected his bounty, the plastic case unopened, his blood in the hot
midday sun running softly off the white exuberance of the dress.
How to kill a pig
I expected them to tell me that my bacon
had come from a happy pig, one that had had a full life,
was corn fed and had free range, did yoga in the mornings,
played the cello, spoke Latin and learned
to salsa dance while visiting relatives in Cuba.
I thought maybe there would have been a photo album
to accompany the sacrifice, documenting its first birthday,
first snow and first of everything else,
here an oink, there an oink.
In far corners, I dubbed the mouths of others,
their new voices outbattling the clattering gunnery of plates
slamming down organic everythings.
I gifted one woman berating her phone the French language
to make her all the more endurable.
Sweet as raw cane sugar to my fair trade coffee,
I had the young couple across from me nattering fondly
from their deathbeds; their soon-to-be-left world
better off now than it was when they were younger.
The child in the high chair was at it too,
breaking into L'enfant et les sortilèges when faced
with a spoonload of non-GMO beige matter.
I used a sortilege of my own in stripping the walls clean
and emblazoning the newspaper headlines all
over them to see if anyone would notice, remark, question
that one glaring absence as Truth was strung up by his legs out
the back, throat slit, left to be hung there until the
last drop of blood spattered into the bucket.
No access to the Hollywood Sign
Everyone on Beachwood has a dog.
There is never parking.
The dogs are almost always small and yap
in the hours when most wish to sleep.
If there is parking, it’s because there’s
street cleaning the next morning.
One of these afternoons I will get lucky
and park on a small dog.
I will casually get out of my car, lock it,
and stroll off in my air of nonchalance.
The owner of the dead dog will be too
engrossed with a smart phone to notice.
The sign that informs tourists that there is
no access to the Hollywood Sign is the
most ignored sign in Los Angeles.
The morning after the rain, I sit outside
slicing strawberries into my Special K
watching tourists pose for photographs.
Satisfaction and beauty go hand in hand,
encouraging the Jacarandas to defy the
street cleaners and casually cast
their purple confetti across the sidewalk,
down onto the parked cars, the dogs,
the tourists rebelling against the signs.
All poems © copyright Neil McCarthy 2018