Aloe diagrams; drawn by digits on burnt diagrams. Seen on the shoulders of the migrants bearing slatched satchels of “sedge”. The issue from cut leather: money trails across this and that urban quarter. Stop, the hospital on the hill—bills applied to every elective cut—in curlicues above, suctions of fat drabble leads hissing, through a white fissor with turning spits.
Such is the leisure of a Sunday pedestrian; while hauling drays in financial district water dots the walker from air-conditioners high up. Stop, hail a cousin here—a plot of little in a little spread, popping thistles between asphalt plates. Under slotted clouds; under sliding screens planted with pieced seeds, he tells the story of his own family’s move to the city and resulting dispersal.
During the barracks-time...we improvised little chairs, and had to tell stories, ‘round and ‘round a fire we ate grapes and chased them with thimblefuls of nuts, cadged meat. Bread we made of grounds...from the barrels at the charnel’s back...our backs were sweating, every one. We saw...
I watched the man flailing, snapping bits of loose bark from the trees around...though it was a clearing, wide enough... Clearly I saw the skin of the man under open, canals draining, he hiccoughed lumpen coal. The drenched leaves underneath we made into bread, and preserved with papers and salt.
Then, as some members gathered ants and spiders, we slowly crushed aloe plants and glossed his sweating back...weeks later he was healed...meanwhile we lived off the ants...scars are Braille, we found...each of us saw our histories in speech as we passed our hands over his back, clearly saw our passes with fate....
By now we had found stray sidewalks and lawns that’d suddenly snaked into the rooted environs, each gay light from open picture-windows shone on snaking backbones which were not straight at this time... At the rux of ‘verging roads, tin strips used for receptors, we listened for radiologicals...sidewalk cafes came up about us, with fifty foodstuffs apiece, gloms of herbs plugged piles of cream in wet bread. Glands ticked off time still on the plate, stippling excretions on rice.
Radios tinned from the open doors of several laundries, extension cords spooling out in a mass; a stooping man kicked a can of oil and it fell whole into the steaming drain. See there, spare room for legs. Grasses collected from hilltop parks and cultivated to mat the boxes...concrete hot-boxes physically dimmed with smoke. Music we called “the radiologicals” sounded seamless with ductwork hiccuping; drafts from behind sopping carpets blow back plastered hair. I put two fingers to my head and see—radiologicals conducted as conduits for viscous aloe—hollows and tunnels unseen in the air.
-2001
