–after Weldon Kees
Crumpled between dumpster and fire door, whites of her eyes stippled
red, scream stiff in a tin-gray face. No surprises anymore I overhear
the forensic guy sigh. All the usual, plus we got the month’s food
stamps ripped and stuffed in her panties. May the men who kill, starve.
The guy tilts toward the screech of worn brakes on slick pavement. No
trail of skin leads back to the street. Of course not, not with the odd
rain this morning to finally loosen the starched ribs of dormant ocotillo,
about to bleed claret blooms. I pause between the store’s back door
and a graffitied cargo bay, scented trash bag tied and bulging in my hand.
Thunder-heads split midtown’s amphitheater into rows of streaked sun
or slate shadow. I know the dimness of storage closets and urinals
as I know alleyways, this rill of acrid water, this swill-turned-wash
that only slides our scuffed ambitions to the other side of asphalt
corrals, but can’t permeate the caliche in this fevered valley. No sun’s
a blessing today the guy remarks as he leaves to join the going day, carved
of women who simmer through desert summers in crimped metal bus
shelters for the chance to cool in travertine kitchens, tiled laundry nooks,
cornice-ceilinged nurseries. I imagine the spot she’d waited for the 52,
as one hand shuffled coupons in her pocket, the other closed around a second-
hand umbrella. She must have believed the stretch of floor she’d scrub harder
today some charm on which her luck would turn. She must have never
felt the man’s approach, just the raw scratch of his sleeve against
her neck. The umbrella is still gripped in her hand unfurled,
and the sudden shower rends a river down her arm.
