Lead

The heat and intangibility of sound, flora and cadence of the place leave me feeling like I’m below water. Lizards and insects bob upside down, under eaves and throughout improbable surfaces like fish in their composition while the sun shimmers overhead unwaveringly. As my cigar smoke wafts bubbling surfaceward I crush the butt surprised to notice my flippers unafixed.

.009 Bosch

Sometimes I think back and say Schenectady, what the hell was all that? And find myself remembering white and black tiled bathrooms in catacombs under San Diego that only one other person I’ve met knew of and am glad that even though all that comes to me about it is four pints of apricot brandy and floor to shoulder urinals I know I was there and so was the High School biology teacher I met in a store that sold kites, and even if the day comes and goes intertwined with cricket ball collisions of unidentifiable memories I still have that with the same evening coming up from them almost as drunk as I was that afternoon in the kite store to find a dark café where people were waiting for us along with a bowl of Captain Crunch which preceded another from the counter with the woman who knew the name I used to go by and was laughing about how the biology teacher was saying that even the kites couldn’t pass a breathalyzer after I stepped into the store and that’s why she said hello.

A Brim Slightly To Wide To Go Unnoticed

Sunk half asleep in the leather backseat of Robert’s car zooming across Tampa to the Cuban section with sunlight kaliedescoping through palm trees not much of it matters anyway. And as we make a sharp turn onto Bayshore Boulevard and the conversation up front switches from Heulobecq to Morales and the Sunday New York Times catches wind and a laptop case leans against me, the debate remains the debate remains the debate.