It was this way:

a cluster of us, waiting
for a signal to change,
the brown-skinned man next to me
proclaiming Prada on a t-shirt, his green cap
says why not? my shoulders bare to the heat
but for aqua straps then a writhing thing turned up
by so many sharp shovels of hard digging
pushes her way into us.

It was this way:
the effort of arms cranking wheels
depletes the reserves she's gathered to get here,
head lolls, matted hair resting on a navy blouse
with yellow flowers hanging open
limp empty breasts cracked nipples
laying on her distended belly like animals,
bare filthy feet, bruised and bloody toes
unbearably delicate poking out below
two calves contained in blackened casts,
skin patterned with a constellation
of blue-edged sores, purple broken flesh
too much of it for any explanation,
spills over the plaster, over
the sides of the battered chair dragging
a pink skirt painted with brown shit
in the remaining spokes of one wheel,
her eyes closed, through white cracked lips she says
sounds that don't come
from human mouths, is missing the second finger
on her right hand, is wearing one silver dangling earring,
has a newspaper, and a bible on her lap,
flies ring a buzzing halo around her head.
It was this way.

She is our raw wound, oozing
every terrible thing we've thought
or said or done, or haven't,
our every private shame dissected, laid out
naked on the slab of our legion of failures,
gaping pit from which we are unable to climb out,
terrified to step into.
She is how we try and drain the sea
with a straw.
And we look away while we watch
for the white light hand raised, like a benediction
we don't deserve and it comes and we take it, we
cross the street, no backward glance,
the white hand guiding us, safe.


It was this way.

We have forgotten what she looks like already.

david michael

Sitting with a friend inside Banquette Cafe on Main, we looked up and David Michael was sitting on the other side of the window, smoking Marlboro Reds, every now and then pushing his glasses up, taking sips of iced coffee from a thick bistro glass, looking for all the world like some kind of advertisement for every romantic image you secretly harbor of intense writers scribbling and starving artists sketching at sidewalk cafes. It could have been Paris.

As it turns out, we weren't far off with the starving artist thing. He was homeless, depending upon the empty couches of kind friends most days, trying to stay in design school and the big plaid bag on his table's other seat was full of most everything he'd decided to carry with him. He was drawing intricate and graceful patterns on the pages of his sketchbook that he hoped ultimately would be designs for fabric.

When we interrupted him to ask what he was doing and explain how very romantically he'd struck us--with his drawing and cigarettes and Woody Allen sort of sexiness, if Woody Allen wore Levis and white t-shirts-- he was startled but charming and bemusedly consented to a photo. As we ate lunch, it became evident that the waitress had quite a crush on him, considered him one of her regulars, and his iced coffee never reached the glass-half-empty spot.

We wanted to buy him lunch. Offer a couch. Invite him to dinner. Put our fervent wish that we'd someday wear a patterned silk dress that burst with the bright essence of his creative drive into his duffel bag, to carry against those days when it seems one is too old, too poor, too damned tired to keep struggling, to keep dreaming it will all one day come together the way we imagine.

We settled for slipping a twenty to the waitress for the next time he came in, sure that she'd look out for him. I walked by Banquette for weeks to give him a copy of his picture, but I never saw him again.