No. 5

Winter 2004

I was going to bed late, and getting up early
to water other people's gardens beneath the snowy glare
of street lamps. I was twirling my baton and cooking
with peppers, sometimes I dreamt in Spanish.
Things were murky, flamboyant, pretty damn good
until Kevin picked up the civilized speech of city planners,
started to talk about "signage" and "fugitive dust particles."
He was only fourteen, but already he was leaving
phone messages in iambic pentameter, adding bleach
to the dishwater. He'd joined Common Cause.
Then one day I noticed the orderly formation of ants
under the porch, the creeping advance of cuticles,
the ra-ta-tat-tat of snare drums. You could see it was all
drying up. Newspapers printed colorful descriptions
of Nixon's foreign policy while prison architects turned
somersaults in the wild spaces of Arizona. Financial wizards
switched to postum and the beautiful young people
arrived, manicured and unprepared to change the world.
They said "Save us, our hematocrit levels are dropping,"
they said "Our platelets won't kiss in the dark."
So we gave it up, started our engines. We drove to Venice
hungry for heavy ions and the smokey glow of our own
laptops.

Copyright 2003, Deborah Bogen

nidus is an online publication supported by the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh's English Department.