Rosy Promenade
Mark Coleman
The covers to my
chin, I fell into an embryonic sleep. Twirling down alleyways encased in
marble-veined buttressed glass. The shops on either side displaying their
polished and dusted trinkets.
The bell jars
beneath which stand rigid, obeisant praying mantises reflecting the sun’s rays.
Chaperoning those swimming pool dances on the hotel room’s ceiling. Lying there
in remembrance of planetarium school days.
The delft seahorses
lined on wicker rocking chairs as fragile as their seafaring brethren. The
diaphanous dorsal fin fine as a square of blotting paper. The curlicue tail
beckoning in foreplay come hither. The head like a miniature wolf’s from bespangled
snout to starfish eye.
Hobby horses with a
button missing in their heads give up the neigh. The mauve thread fractured out
of knit. Stuck in black plastic potholders padded out with Styrofoam peanuts. A
little yellower than the ones in the cardboard boxes your toddler builds
castles with. Dry rot on a pogo stick.
The ruby lipped
Russian Dolls rotund with quadruplets. The carefully painted babushkas from
which the central parted, flaxen hair arches as the bristling cat on the
scratching post flashes its adamite embers. The logs in the hearth prodded by insolent
pokers flame as the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
A dirge howled by
the hound at the foot of its master. The corncob pipe scorches as the match
hits the tobacco. A long inhale. A tubercular cough soothed with grappa. The
dog snuggles in closer to itself and moans. Its ears lay back on its head.
I move past a
cathedral covered in gargoyles. They sit on their haunches and grin out at
empty space. Small scale Passions run through cornices. A shamrock cross
accentuates the cleavage of a passerby. Sext and pious chatter.
The candy store on
my right parades its saccharine wares. Peppermint barber poles rooming with
licorice sticks. Bottle-nosed strands of taffy on wax paper beside multicolored
nuggets. Lemon, Chocolate, Grape, Melon, Vanilla peacock in their cases.
Gumballs spiral down into the palms of girls in sundresses.
Cokes wind up
cambered straws to the pursed lips of foppish men’s dates. Eyelashes bat
flirtatiously. Milkshakes in stainless steel elevator up to the flipper adorned
blender. Spattering the countertop. Coquettish laughter over French fries
swimming in ponds of ketchup.
Packards outside the movie theater. The
marquee missing a vowel here and a consonant there. Inside they talk fast, garbled nonsense and speechify the nuclear family. A semi-salacious poster
promises licentious adventure. Excited couples rush to the ticket booth. The
attendant gets a paper cut, and sucks his thumb.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I find a dying rose
in the street, and proceed to pull off its petals. An erotic poet would find in
it a different life than me. For me it has a human face. My fingers stain red.
I think of lipstick and a passion drenched Malevitch square.
The soft tangibility
of blue velvet in the mind taking on voluptuous curves. The warm mound of
breast from which Empedocles will never escape. The hips thrown and the
buttocks tendered.
A woman approaches
in a tight fitting dress, her black satin underwear peaks out at me like a
playful child around a corner. Her budding anemone eyes seek out a tenebrous horizon.
An enchanting white mist clings to the orbs as it does in those blind. There’s
a sort of grope in her spyglass glance.
The ships are too
far to sea to properly make out. If they were bottled, she could peruse them at
her leisure. The schooner with its spruce hull and paper sails. The Plasticene sea raging behind it. Fragments
of pelagic tissue pasted to the sky.
A truck unloading orange crates bars her way. They are piled
before a farmer’s market on the sidewalk. A few rogue fruit find their ways
into the greedy paws of street urchins.
Further along the
gulls cry over the boardwalk. The crabs march up and down. Their eyestalks
frond swaying. Their pincers snapping open and shut. Rostrums in philosophical
mull.
I wipe my hands on the back of my pants,
leaving a menstrual-esque stain. My blue-collar movements are reflected in a
rainbowed gasoline puddle. I attempt a whistle but it dies somewhere between my
tongue and lips. I feel like a mechanic, and I wish that I had grease on my
jeans.
A twist in my boxers
makes me change my position. A crick in my neck has me gazing up at a starless
sky. I move about the hidden constellations to positions I would have preferred
as a child. Standing on the mantelpiece with a spur in each hand.
Broken snow globe
wintering the carpet. Tiny splinters from a calf’s femur running off in
streamlets. The idyllic scene disturbed. The shepherdess displaced from her
sheepfold. The ceramic Zupfe rolling end over end to the clawed foot of the
couch whose cushions remember every unfaithful liaison.
The rose in the vase
has gone un-watered and has begun to wither. In some cursory manner, she has
made it to the ocean. Rushing down the esplanade, crushing lavender and
centaury under foot as though they were nothing but frost flowers on the lake
back home.
Down past the cracking indigo beach huts. The
startled tourists beneath their umbrellas showered by the sand her heels kick
up. They don’t attempt to shake out their blankets. Their silver trunks and pitch
pupils shoot blistering glares at her. The sun at its meridian wishes it were
the moon.
The waves crash against
rocks above which towers a sprawling, uninhabited estate said to be haunted by
a suicide. An exclamation gathers at the back of your throat. Beachcomers,
shocked out of their work, stare at her figure as it disappears into the
white-crested waves. The tin in their hands drops back. The metal detectors nix
the treasure. Only the noose has solved the pirate’s riddle.
Someone dives in after
her, coming up with nothing but large bunches of sea grapes in his hands. Women
in straw hats and one-pieces begin to gather just close enough that their toes
are submerged in the water. Men with cheap sunglasses about their necks on
Dayglo elastic cords and sunscreen on their noses mumble reassurances through
graying mustaches to their wives.
The wives shoo them away like the swarms of
flies that overtook a section of the beach where a whale decided he’d give the
landlubber life a go. The woman may or not wash up. If she does, the crabs are
sure to find her first. Picking over whatever the fish choose to leave them. Her
features will be ruined. A small child on his first vacation raises a seashell
to his ear, and listens to the sea spread out before him.
