Ari Banias

The magnolia before it blooms stands bare as a statue from antiquity or a shaved puss, it flowers first then greens. A pissed off dyke climbs into the branches to be held by an ancient indifference and both were me. Yet it’s possible I am a short bald man. That I am neither a big-bosomed wide-hipped pretty nor a short bald man. An antelope, an elk, a deer on this rug, a twiggy tree. The genderless squat figure, solo, blurry, hands on hips, that repeats. A plush life of winter and summer colors of flowers alongside tight checkered bands edging the broad green center where we look for each other, a woods, a pasture, a park, a yard, a median of grass set in a concrete mold situated within a pay lot. How it feels to stand outside a house at night whose lights are on. Whose lights are on.

In a room more chicken coop than room, I rent a fan that feels on my face like sound. Low traffic from San Fernando, named for a king who became a city, a valley, a saint. We are meant to repeat his name. Instead I say prickly pear, a cactus which spreads its many-paddled hands into the space around itself. No pears. I call Mom to ask what the latest austerity measures mean. Some ants on the wall make their way from one unseeable point to another; the banks have closed. I tell her to barter; barter what, she says. An acquaintance posts “Tourism: The Best Way to Be an Ally to Greece” as if in each tourist’s pleasure bloomed a charity. Mules clabber down the stone paths loaded with grapes to make next year’s wine, if the tourists come back next year, and we hope they will. I say we, but I’m closer to they. Living temporarily in a neighborhood named for the happy, who were who exactly? I grow a little stiff with, a little lean with, a little faint with, a little worn with seeming. I must need to conquer my mind. The roses dead because of drought because whoever lives here cares enough to let their roses die. I must need to conquer the notion anything needs conquering. Something in me can’t tell what belongs. The ants for whom anything is a street. What sounded like a gate opening was eucalyptus branches dragging themselves along the tin roof. A yellow butterfly that has no interest in me. I have no interest in kings.

You recount the history of the French garden. From above, I see tight rows of trees beside threadbare grass. When the language teacher talks about le capitalisme: the gesture of three fingers rubbing imaginary fabric. I’m a tourist, vulnerable and stupid, my legs showing, shoes practical, face red. Together, we try to reconstruct an anecdote whose contents have scattered. A motorcycle passes, a French police siren you say sounds innocuous then we both laugh sourly. I hadn’t seen a woman slap a child in some time. A truck reversing, and the alarm that continues for hours one morning. Porn on a handheld device, its tinny echo in a room with bare floors and very little furniture. Across the courtyard, this T-shirt on a hanger out the window turns in the light breeze as if trying to look behind itself. I’m consumed with not knowing where to buy paper, safety pins, stamps. The window frames of that building are red, emerging from gray gables. Enormous bumblebee at the threshold investigates the doorway, doesn’t enter. The flies do; they’re promiscuous; they leave. I don’t know the word for because. So each act is disconnected from another. I can almost imagine there are no consequences, the days just pass, one sunny, one cloudy, someone unseen shouts, sirens every few hours, clouds move in a solemn procession across a wide sky staggered with chimneys, people wait to cross the street, a large tree tosses its wig a little. Other small trees in the courtyard flicker. They are responsive. The sun heats the pavement; le pavé répond. You send me a short erotic video, you’re naked, propositioning me. Do you act more like the coin or the water? Across the narrow street this bird sipping from roof puddles seems more dove than pigeon. Pacing, grandmotherly, she stops to look at me. Do you just know how to love another person like someone knew to paint those window frames red? Most of the architecture looks floral, like a boring math problem. The crosses that reach and reach. Why does the scrape of the furniture when I rearrange it sound like crass American English to me? I slept late, now I’m watching the clouds, like clouds in an eighteenth-century painting. Overly articulate. Except these clouds are not trying to symbolize anything. Where’s my dove. I always want to go look at people. A booth selling copies of copies of Louis Vuitton. The small shadow the roof makes on another roof right next to it. When my friend came to Paris she wanted to break everything. Impeccable shoes on the impeccable feet. Clothes so new they’re creamy, and to seem to never have to 
compromise. I feel tattered when I’m actually not. I’m an American, I eat. A huge decorative basket of citrus snugged beside me in the upscale bistro. The woman from a building opposite comes down, indignant: Who threw a pomelo into my window? You read to me about the history of the barricade. I picture the drab suburbs. The shoulders and elbows of people in the museum evoke more reaction in me than most of the paintings. A young lithe person with live eyes tends bar,gender trouble tattooed up their arm. I count twenty-nine sleeping bags lined up beneath the overhang and each one inhabited. I read to you about the history of enclosure. Two people talking on a balcony, their black hair blowing. One leaning over into the courtyard. Behind the cathedral, vulgar black felt stapled in the raised flowerbeds to mask their frames. The river stinks, allures, as a specific person can. A repository, a consequence, a long sentence, an ongoing story. The generous current cut through by a party boat shouting wooo! wooo! wooooooo! wooo! emitting an obscene light waving at whatever will wave back.