Back to Issue Fifty-Eight

300 coats.
I’m in my window like a bus driver.
300 on hooks from the ceiling all the way down to my knees
and the strobe flashes, flashes
and the heavy metal wears on me—
shakes, clangs, crashes, stops, starts.
Sometimes I step back, just stand there in the dark
with the coats, be porous, be nobody, rest
for the rush that comes quiet as low tide,
flick of the house lights, comes this stink, this effluvia
of stale smoke, beer, sweat, line forming
along the wall my only worry like a crack in plaster:
What if I lose a coat?
Sometimes the bouncer—knuckle rings,
glossy suit—slips me a drink, sweet Amaretto
I go back, all the rustling business of fall,
the layers and layers, the collars, the cuffs, the orange
old timey tickets Admit One.
Every time, at the fringes, corner of my eye
I catch these glimpses, car headlights rounding the bend
of way back when the garbage was tipped:
in the roadside blaze everywhere raccoons like doctors
unwrapping, inspecting.
Every time: lose a coat, lose the job, lose the room, this family
I live with always complaining I eat too much
for a ballet dancer.
Once a drunk peered in, he shouts
Where is she?
(I’m up the ladder) He grabs my leg, my tights
rip and nobody sees, nobody
sees the prickles of light in which I freeze,
smile through. Oh, strange trick how
everything in me prickles darkness
like a raccoon, perfect arrest—
strange habit indeed: old seizures in white
flashes dissolve in a night
I didn’t know I had in me.