California Plaza
I have seen the weakest martyrdom
scrawled into the margins of a ledger,
seen tear stains on a checkbook
where wet paper bends the balance more sharply than
my skinny elbows on a midnight library railing.
I’ve suckled a privilege so soured
with second-hand agony slobbered on by
someone in an apron or a star piece wedding ring
that every bite of café sushi tastes like a waste of time,
And 3 a.m. follows you around in an ink-stained hoodie and a
gas station snow hat until you’re forced to bed yourself in a sidewalk snowdrift
with nothing in your hands but your mother’s chain-linked fingers and
a plastic tally of an older man’s forgotten hamburgers and lab manuals,
And you squint upward through a soap scum
of halogens and bedroom windows at three or four runty stars
peppered with an acne of helicopters and spotlights,
begging for a reason to say
“Thank you,”
And no small eternity in those familiar kneelers
just ten steps off the cobblestones
can do more than ferry that rusty homesick plea
to its veiled harbor of resonance and burnished metal
until tomorrow’s tired eyes and debt-softened hands
ship more,
by lapfuls,
whole shoeboxes of
oil and
concrete and
glass,
tie them with neat bows of hourglass cursors and decimal points,
smile at you, assuring,
“You’ll need this,”
then unstaple their grins and in tears ask so urgently,
“But what in the world makes you think so?”
Dan McIlhon
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