Poem

A Lesson in Subtraction

The ass of a decade
dents tweed braids of sunrot
and the seat has lost itself across the floor.
Rust bubbles up outside the cab
boiling brown
on the crane’s bleached red shell.

The smiles of fingernail grit,
grainy teeth,
black hands on black knobs;
the operator left for lunch
in 1979
and through empty windows
his last minute watches
what the city missed;
a moustache of trees
two small carribean seas,
blue glass blown to silence
like Paul Newman’s eyes
in old school sunshine.

No fish in this ocean,
but ghosts of old trucks
climb on the bottom.

There’s two ways out,
one way in;
the creek passes under a railroad bridge
bringing tires and shopping carts
out of the woods.

In spring, Cleveland is messy
and they are 14,
truant, innocent. Stupid.
Emerging from a picket
of crammed maples;
bucks striding behind bare chests.
Aftermath and subtraction
off their minds
like hands of the creek
running down their bodies.

In the mouth
beneath red iron and railroad ties
they walk on a tongue
of dirty water and broken shale
stomping and spraying.

They climb the crane,
slap a tone off its walls,
kick foam and shove each other
off the driver’s seat.

Four boys
too young to care
that some kid died here
last summer,
inhaled in a freak undertow.
Divers couldn’t find his body;
lodged and bloated,
floating in quartz and silence.

These boys are running
through silt shore
which swallows their ankles
in gray mouths.
One treads water
kicking dust off the bottom into little Hiroshimas,
while the others swim to the middle,
suspended in a cobalt sky. Ducks.

Glitter, clouds of lime
rise from the mineshafts;
words from the dead boy
between their toes.

When cold water finally edges them out,
they make their way towards shore
stepping on chilled breath from the quarry’s lungs,
wading through wet,
mache bank.
3 of them;
a few steps, then dirt,
but the earth is traveling farther up his legs.

A thick splash
and two boys scramble
to reach him
afraid of the mud now
‘cause it’s got quicksand lips around his chest.
He’s half swallowed,
someone has a board
but he can’t reach;
his eyes are gone
beneath hair and hands.

Everybody’s mouth is silent,
like a black bubble
left half open.