Research: Journals
The Journal
Past Issues
27.1
Gerald Majer
Noctorn, Miles: MuteThe building named what—
Reliance, Fidelity, Universal Trust?
The watchman holds in smoke—from somewhere
a thing about Omar Khayaam,
then a brook of crimson, color running
with the word
he’s holding in too, ten stories above
the light-wet spine of downtown alley,
love-blood flowering in his head
crimson, crimson,
as he hisses
like the steam-line on the sixteenth floor
the last soul of the smoke
fluttering out his mouth—
The fire-escape moves an inch off its bolts
and in the window a buzzing fly
stumbles into a corner, falls to the dark
like a stilled breath of air
in a room that lays itself open
at the smallest touch of the hand,
door where the true detective
trails the crooked-mouth man, the black hat on him,
can’t quite hear what he’s saying
to the woman, lipstick slash
and seam wandering her shiny stocking,
her skirt’s ride up slant where
light cuts her across and she whispers
down into a pillow so whoever’s
listening draws closer—yes, he cocks his head—
and what happens or already has
is her voice stuffed keening—mmmm—
or it’s his mouth imploring under crimson silk,
or the two of them leaning over,
Mr. Gag and Miss Muffle,
their gossip blurring over the incautious dick
with no choice
but to trigger the .45
though it’s rubbered up inside something
like glass tubing on bone,
rocket stoppered with ice,
black plunger in a clear syringe—
He discharges his duty,
the stick shoots out,
the silk flag unfurls its cocoon,
says FUCK YOU, says I LOVE YOU,
and a lone gong
from Chicago Temple, three blocks down,
forty stories: it might be one o’clock,
it might already be three, four,
a stroke gone missing
in the damp ringing the streets
and something rattling the boilers,
sound like a copper-float with no water in the tank,
sound like a whistling top—
Mercury capsule burning down to Earth
the astronaut inside shouting to let him out
but they can scarcely hear him,
voice in the whirlwind,
backwashed static, fading radio—
scream-steaming
as the world carries him over its back
and he rocks with its blood tide and flow—
crimson brook,
the ruby birds
over the love gardens
probing deep in the flower-bells
their heads buried in pollen,
their swollen throats overflowing
with nectar
almost choking,
and the lilies almost shaking off their stems
become bird-hoods
swaying sex-pendulums
mouths almost to the ground,
inside the flower-bells another bell,
feathered ass-shaking
and beaks like a nest of needles,
in their dives pricking holes
gobbling even the air.
Pink smoke.
Stunned humming.
