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David Chorlton |
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Living with Drought We know we are living with drought when rain becomes so precious we wear the drops on a chain around our necks. Touching the ground each morning to feel for dew reveals our insecurity. We beg the passing clouds to stop, invoke gods known to be extinct for a miracle, and polish our faucets for luck. Wildflower season finds us counting roadside blooms for reassurance. Vacationing in ghost towns we make friends with fate, but too late. The owls are already staring at us accusingly, the lizards have us in their sights, and bats pour into the sky without waiting for dark. We try sleep as a final refuge, only to wake after an hour, reaching for the glass at our bedside and seeing by the light of the scorpion inside it. Reunion Meal in Vienna, 1959 The table is set for remembering. We order the good years for the salad course, swimming in oil that has eyes looking back when tears begin at the mention of childhood. The waiters click their heels, impatient at the time it takes to decide between Wiener Schnitzel and Rostbraten, and march back through the kitchen's swinging doors to the cauldron of fat still angry at wasted lives. By dessert the musicians appear to smother our plates with sugar. The uncles beat time with their spoons, the aunts rock their heads side to side, and the smoke from an armory of cigarettes swirls around us like a silk scarf once bartered away for potatoes. Instead of coffee, the grownups keep on crying while we children laugh at them, as if they were the strangers they always tell us to ignore. Viennese Coats Wet with rain, the coats on hooks inside a coffee house cling together for company on another grey day. At the market, old ladies in green loden bend close to examine the fruit and struggle to communicate with the foreigners who sell them. Outside a department store Mozarts in blue coats step from the eighteenth century to offer leaflets advertising a concert. Everyone feels safe inside their coats as the wind from the east presses its hands against them. There are coats with eyes staring from collars of fur, coats of gleaming leather, and coats bound at the waist with muscular belts. The statues have coats for all seasons, and coats hang in closets in a widow's apartment like young women waiting to be asked for a dance. And there are black silk coats that keep returning to the ghetto, with history sewn into their lining. |