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UNTITLED
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Omaha is muted. Three record-breaking snowfalls have frayed the edges like a piece of cheesecloth on a camera lens. I am a blur. My eyes watch every step like the ice is a schoolyard bully, waiting to trip my feet and laugh as I fall. Omaha is cold. Double-digit below-zero windchills empty the streets, like an ocean of frost has wiped the city clean and everyone went to higher ground. I am a shiver. My body surrenders like a great struggle has finally ended, or some torture has, at last, hit its mark. My many layers of clothes disappear in the howling wind. Copyright © 2004 by Brian E Bengtson |
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Bloodletting
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The eyes never seem to make it to my face as I join them on the quarterly march to a room, or a paper-covered table, or the chair made to help with the flow, but I don't see them either. A past that hiccups at me, and fumbles for an apology as the scenes are laid out for me again, like my favorite Sunday funnie, or the lights from the city on my bus ride home. The men with the newly-minted opening lines, and the boys who needed prodding, the guys who just guessed right, or the ones who I decided were just for not having to go home alone, recite their names in the back of my head as I make the fist, and turn away. Curtains scraping on the floor excuse themselves for slamming me back to that first gloryhole, the first wistful taking in of anxious breath, as I wish for the full picture on the other side. I'm eight and a half, again, praying to a God to prove that he's around, and make the toy in my pocket disappear. I look at my chart, avert my gaze, and wonder if I just might have left it outside. Copyright © 2004 by Brian E Bengtson |
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