Steve Smith

black dreams and blue thieves

~

a pregnant wife should dream of

willows and cotton and children

pattering across blanched linoleum

~

mine dreamt that construction was

going on across the street at 4 am;

the elementary school—crews had been

there for summer weeks.

but nowthe school was vacant and black

~

so her mind's rattle of saber saws and

clanging scaffolding had to be

the work of a sinister imagination.

REMs spinning like a cockeyed phonograph

they buzzed and screamed in her

wee hour ears and

she thought someone sawing and

grinding and sawing through chains.

~

she awoke.

~

sat up, belly full, upright and

cautious—stole a glance

through the window gauze

like deer at leafy branches

watching evening shadows

fall across fallen corn

~

there, in the back yard, were

the workers that had been laboring—

at least in the black electric dream of hers.

now they'd come back to life

as thieves in midnight blue

wheeling her gas grill noisily through

wet grass—a broken security

chain dragging behind like a brat

by the hand.

~

for the man next to her side

half nude, open-mouthed and

exhaling dryly like fine sand,

for him

summertime poverty

whispers a strange psalm

that the killing verse

should follow a blue thief to

the grave. final.

~

here’s the shotgun loaded

in my hands and i pull back

sleep's webbing and

whoosh through

the front door in underwear

boiling blood

~

Harrington & Richardson is a

tunnel that does not change course or

bird shot in the chamber

and low-brass in the hand.

~

when you draw a bead

on another man you decide

right then—if you take a chunk of

the criminal mind, you just might

blast something else from the midnight sky.

!