Matthew Shindell
The Day :: Born :: The Red Door
I work in building number twenty-six
on the fifth floor. Something like that.
Office number 503. People say,
there’s Bill Wassermann, that miserable
scrap. I pay no attention. What
does he have to smile about? That jerk.
The traveling medicine show with his
cockroach powders. I worked
for a man like him once: woke up
in the whore house more times than I
care to talk about. His name was Jim.
Mine was Bernardo. Andy was as a tree.
Bernardo died in the arms of two
children who promised vengeance.
They put on his falcon hood and rope.
A genuine mud farmer’s hat.
Let’s finish my coffee before I go.
I police an area twice-and-a-half the size
of Rhode Island proper. Permits
to burn things. My
little red two-seater.
I met Wassermann through the company
back in
the general expansion. Always looking
for fights, always throwing around
the milk.
I can’t say my story is worth telling,
or that I have one at all. Only that
I
made three journeys there and back,
not one. Once for strength, once for
speed,
and once more just for the magic.
Actually, that was my father. A busy
man.
God knows where he found the time.
He brought me this tarantula bolo tie
and the news one of my friends
was dead from meth.
But it could
just as easily have been a scorpion -
they sell those too - or a
paperweight.
I met Bill Wassermann working for the agency.
He wore the same scorpion bolo tie.
The only news he had was that you get
to lie down. You get to have a
shave,
if you want. If you don’t, that’s
all right too.
Four Star General
A large debt left in
Is why I wrote. Anyway, it’s why
They gave me paper. Last night
They found me in the old
Brick building. It felt like water
Beneath the church. (This hand
Explodes into a flock of birds,
And this one into a bird of prey –
And now there is a difference.)
Often, from a certain height,
one can drop a plate or bowl
and it will not break. That last
night
I spent dreaming I hated us all.
I dreamt you wrote of stupid wine
And the rats that chew on your ears.
A saber wound from a short necktie.
I woke bleeding from below the navel.
(This hand turns into Jesus, who says,
“Sometimes I am, as a man, meant
To talk the eternal Jabber. Others
Have to offend for themselves.”)
Many reputable men do say this, Keith.
The land to which we fly is red of dirt
And sky. And of winged antelope.
(I ask Jesus, did you love a planet
Of a million dreams, or just leave
A little prayer inside my other
hand?
“More a bundle of grains,” he says.
And with that flies great distances.
With or about that grain I feed to him,
and he to the birds.) A lot of men
do worry. What’s meant to grace
the sky is none of their business.
About the Author
“Their Best Trick” is where they hire
a woman to seduce you on a beach.
Then they kill her. It’s no escape after that,
not unless there’s something
you care about more than yourself.
I don’t go to the beach.
My name is
Matt Shindell, which means:
(1)
There’s always an offer
on the table. (2) Conditions
that may or may not be met.
(3) All in a day’s work.
But that’s purely descriptive.
Maybe this thing I heard about the Cyclops
is the best way to begin. He traded
one eye
to the beast in order to see the
future. The only
future he sees is the moment of his own
death.
Now me, I’m not so bad.
My one eye looks as if to say,
“Don’t
even bother finishing
this story of all you did
on your night without me,
I
discovered while you were out
that I’m not in love anymore.”
The other,
“A
dragon doesn’t care
the condition of his castle;
he only wants it for a lair.”
My name is
Matt Shindell.
Let me explain: When I first came in, a light
was behind you. Your silhouette was
that
of a woman at a desk. But you’re
sitting up
in bed. I see that now.
From where you sit, tell me if you don’t see
something like a man on a raft in a cigar
box ocean
cupping his hands around the speck of
land
painted on the horizon. He’s not getting
there
anytime soon – that’s the look of it.
Still, tell him he doesn’t feel what warm
breezes might blow across that land.