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   s c a n n i n g    t h e    t o x i c    r o o m

--- R O N A L D   P A L M E R


A stranger lurks: beneath my skin: beyond the blue bubble: letters: Hip: Hop: spray painted next to the pink swastikas: memorizing my fears: waiting to be reintroduced: Konca Feliks: come with me: meet your beautiful self again face to face: stand before the fingerprinted mirror in Block 21: weep into me: through the yellow hills: patched with snow: from my train window: I squint down hill: through vertical white lines of scattered young birches: a German Shepherd: scrambling to his feet: next to his backyard doghouse: I hear myself thinking: Thank God he's short-chained: international rationalization of a rising new fascist: he's barking in frantic three bark intervals: bark bark bark: then the sliding of his paws: pacing on the pitted ice: failing at chasing: my train: eventually lies down again: in a dirt patch within his bluish circle of ice: I carry this dog with me: the rest of the way: with each barking echo: my mind flings out like a solar flare: My train races past a long line of box cars: heaped with chunked coal: fast-rocking on a parallel track: opposite direction: foooowump: foooowump: windows suction: spontaneous whistling: in the cracks: speed's singing through metal latches: in the distance: a town approaches: each coal-soured Church: slouches in gloom: recent snow dumped on the region: only serves to annunciate: Poland's palpable muteness: somber groups of elderly couples: holding each other like an apology: at pedestrian stop lights: each building begs to be questioned: about their stone sculpted faces: each window is framed by faces: here for example: a missing slab of green concrete: exposes the underside of a plaster cheek: another angel's eyes are a concentrated blindness: reaching out to the tram-wires: while everything sobs: even my train window pulses with a begging: my arms limp: sketching a world-map of this infectious and eerie: disappearing: this time: I walked the snow path alone: through the towering shadows of barbed wire: this time I stood alone on stained cement: this time I closed my eyes: scanning the toxic room:

© crossconnect 1995-2000 |
published in association with the |
university of pennsylvania's kelly writers house |