Chad Reynolds
The skinny crowd drooled religiously.
Even their rags were biblical.
I fought the urge to genuflect
by pretending rosary beads
were really strung peas and the cross
a t-bone steak IÕd just licked clean.
Grandmothers among us furrowed
at the clasp poking through my teeth.
Even after supper, when sidewalks
and curbs welcomed us back home,
guilt surrounded me like a motorcade
of moving vans intent on carting away
little overlooked parts of my soul
to deposit them like secondhand spoons
in some Salvation Army to tarnish
a window display for years at half price.
Pedestrians ignore me, mostly. Once,
my grandmother stopped to peer inside
but didnÕt recognize me among
the mismatched silverware. I know this
because she purchased me and polished me.
She uses me each day to slurp her lunch.
I envy the manhole cover operators.
To be able to throw the openings aside
and slip below the city to where
the waters congregate, to join
the congregation as it rushes toward
its final hallelujah with the sea.
There are a thousand ways to go.
Cars lining up around the block
are nothing more than potential
siphon hose assembly lines
to take the idea of taking
somewhere new, namely somewhere
else, as in not here, in this
closed circuit that is my body.
What gets what gets us
from point A to B from point A
to B with fewest delays?
Posthaste from here to over
there, from this side or above
ground or exhumed to the
other, underwater, buried deep.
Please, let there be a thousand ways.