Angel of the Morning
I get drunk
and watch a Pedro Costa movie,
the shape of grief, plaster falling in when they hope
to take a shower, wash off the spit
and comb their hair out before bed,
a stranger’s sheets, a lover who abandoned
them so simply for false promise in Lisbon,
it was more like a shaping of dough for frying, chopping
pumpkin for stewing, smearing peanut sauce on springrolls, what
the lordship calls facts, factum, fractal wisdom wailed in subway
sax over click track,
our roof is leaking, there are spore-spots in the
corners, mossy growths on the windows, curtains stained
and dripping with brownout bruise, a hole hangs in the ceiling
where I once hoped to replace the horrific chandelier monstrosity that
blinded us over dinner, that one time we had dinner at the table, shared
curry with guests who drove two hours to find us on the margins of the
city, we sat together and shared takeout samosas,
pretended
the masala was more than watery slop, afterwards played
early Joni on the turntable and swapped verses, maybe we sang
something, certainly
we were not worried then about our fascist neighbors, who now walk the neighborhood in late afternoons, guns holstered on their swagger, looking out for brown kids who frequent the 7-11 and visit the ducks swarmed in the culvert-lakes,
there were fewer flags on trucks then,
today I saw five lined up across the pickup arse, texas/eagle/prez,
flopping in hot wind like puppies
popped in their peabrains
with kiddie bbguns,
the prez twisted round its stiff prick poking out the back
so I have to be careful not to scrape my chassis,
lined up behind throbbing chevy
in the drivethru at TacoCabana, and I have to wait extra long
while the driver rails at the woman at the window
because the change is not coming out sweet
and steady and on time, only really it’s her accent
that makes him peel out after
and swing into the Petco parking lot to stuff two steak tacos and a
stale quesadilla down before heading back to the homestead, and I am
listening to a failed song about failed love,
without mercy there is no mercy,
without mercy there is no pico,
without mercy there is not enough queso,
without mercy we have only enough cat food to feed the animals through this weekend,
without catfood there is no promise of tongues gifted with prophetic speech,
without prophecy there is no pleasure in Portuguese longshots, near-silences laced with ambient
voicestreetgroan,
without silence there is no awareness of poverty within,
I head for the park to eat my tacos, pull into the space between two other
loners who sit with engines running, windows rolled up, chew on their
chicknuggets and balance their laptops, dip sorrow in gravy then sit with no
music, no radio, checking out the apt. complex nextdoor, lawncare specialist
trimming grasses round the keypad entrance, I roll down my window to hear the
blade spinning, read an article about the sighing collapse of 70s feminism in the
80s, don’t make it to the end, this is not the 80s I want to think about,
the revelation of Patmos, the perfect city as a perfect steel cube, horrorpromise
circling everslow in everspace and evertime, song unending that sounds more like
a slice of looped Angel of the Morning
bind bind bind bind bind bind bind
my hands my hands my hands my hands
bindbind my handshands
bindhands my handsbind
my band my hind
cut off the speaker midsentence
examine the shadow of friendship
cease weeping sentimental tears over oilgas tumors
gate swings back
squint in sudden flare
of sun
James Miller won the Connecticut Poetry Award in 2020, and is published in the Best Small Fictions 2020 anthology from Sonder Press. Recent pieces have appeared or are forthcoming in Rabid Oak, North Dakota Quarterly, Scoundrel Time, 8 Poems, Phoebe, Yemassee, Mantis, Cleaver, Rathalla Review, Worcester Review, Elsewhere, Passengers, West Trade Review and Counterclock. Follow on Twitter @AndrewM1621.