Sean Thomas Dougherty

Sunday, 8:14 A.M.

No one is drumming the dusty sheens of their cars with callused palms. No one is driving the wrong way under street signs to avoid dozing cops. What is the backwards face of a clock? Sleep never finds the woman crossing herself as she stares at her breath in the bathroom mirror. Sing for not matter, for the sane man not scatting the yellow light outside the House of D. The smoke of newspaper is letters tangled in the sheets of drinking alone. Lift the labels and watch them scatter like black confetti, dazed by the waste of left over parades, the walls of the city will fade like Carmen Electra caught on long playing vinyl. Winter is a langorously hot summer of driveby shootings away. Sing while you're waiting in line to buy Appolinaire's leftover linen. Hear him rise like a James Tate line - all that fluttering nonsensical rhythm. Chew the academy's broken grievances. This is the last month of not winning. Amherst is a ha ha. Iowa an um hum. Time to get busy say the B-boys strumming the waves with their rhymes. Marita that neighbor next door lets down her long brown hair. When she opens her window all the little birds start singing. And a man named Antonio (you've heard of him? Heard his wife call him to dinner?) pushes wide his screen door with two slopping yellow buckets of soapy water. He stands before his 1987 metallic blue Lincoln Continental. He's just been laid off (you heard them arguing last night). But this morning he looks like he doesn't give a God damn care. In his throat is the key to his sleeping children. Hear them come running down the long hallway of childhood laughter. The roof tops are toppling with unemployed angels. Their voices open the air.