The Dishes Stack Dirty With Loud Complaints

by Scott Meltsner

Straight ahead, she said, and the day that followed was loss, a drizzly wish for something more. Small meteors crash in a feather pillow, tremors from a hard night's stroke. Pliers grip the wires while they pop and blow; electrification fumbles the hardware. She and I ramble from the hurt load of gambit, from the stockpiled strategies of the oppressed, while all along the bridge, dogs ransack the garbage. Broken glass and fast wrists flick the heat off the bay, and the fish cheat and cough. We try to get off. Faster hands clutching throat, suffocating sense of the past rising gradually, like overboiling oatmeal. And the yellow sunspots of the building shaped liked a pyramid are not late. They trance-waver like heat, and we watch jealously. If only we could become light-fixtures or toaster elements, shocking the wires with voltage while that guitar complains rustily. Slap and pucker. It's our only consolation, a good fuck and dinner, not my turn to wash the dishes.

 

Photograph by Seano
 

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