17 June 2008 | Vol. 8, No. 2

Bohemian Hat Trick

by LORI LAMOTHE

Today the wind rushes right through the skeletons,

rushes headlong toward the next stop

on its lonely hearts town tour.

At the local Wal-Mart one big tidal wave of empty

washes over a man ringing and ringing a bell.

A row of plastic Santas scatters across asphalt.

I rinse my hands in stasis. Summer's hot blue sky

has faded to pale, like a painting of madness left out to cool.

If I wanted to I could lean out the window

and knock against the air,

hear the hard sound hollow makes.

On the other side of us, you sit at a desk the size of a bed,

luxuriating in Jane Eyre's Red Room.

Even her black sprawl into unconsciousness

makes a kind of melody you can hum.

Later, maybe coffee with the Eliots, a few rounds

of literary charades: Daniel Deronda & Co.

casting shadows against the mind's firelit wall.

Last week, as you rode your bike home in rain

after cheating with a girl with hair the colors of hell,

you texted you'd been hit by spiritual lightning.

I want to be hit by spiritual lightning!

All evening I stood out on yellowed lawn

chanting in trimeter, holding a matched set of forks.

Nothing happened. So I fell back onto the soft hay of language,

unbraided my lines and let them fan out across an infinity of zeroes.

I watched the burnt match ember of love brighten to illusion,

trompe d'oeil of our old unsteady glow

under the velvet green of trees

and the impossible chill of starlight.