Rachel Sherwood

As this suburban summer wanders toward dark cats watch from their driveways — they are bored and await miracles. The houses show, through windows flashes of knife and fork, the blue light of televisions, inconsequential fights between wife and husband in the guest bathroom voices sound like echoes in these streets the chattering of awful boys as they plot behind the juniper and ivy, miniature guerillas that mimic the ancient news of the world and shout threats, piped high across mock fences to girls riding by in the last pieces of light

From this height the sunset spans the whole world before me: houses and trees are shadows neon flares between them like sudden fire the freeways run, always strangely vacant with riderless cars empty air the windows up here refract the blue slate and rose light making the hills on the horizon collide with ideas of Sussex, piedmont or the cold clear wind of the Abruzzi but that is never what is out there. At home, the lamp curls its aurora into the corners of the room and out the windows squares, rectangles of light stake out a territory on the ragged lawn. In the center of things between the pressing of the window and air — a small space — there is a meeting that defines nothing, everything.

She sat on his lap for hours pressed his face to her large pink breasts    her hands moved through his hair like fond snakes she gave him curls, cleft hooves beneath the flesh marvellous flesh, and smooth shoulders

This is what it's like: you sit in the white room singular, knees together arms over your head to break the noise from the radio that is false as a drunk's promise to loan you his car next week. Of course next week never comes lies continue, nobody disbelieves them but some are ready for the real story the young man involved breaks her tired heart it's the usual: spilt liquor, broken dishes, wrecked cars.

The perfect satisfaction of wine, cigarettes, the sun at an afternoon angle passes through flesh as if flesh were a sieve to the direct point the soul of matter. Things fix time although the sun moves lazily, creating an image that seems like motive the wine transmutes and becomes blood cigarettes dissolve to blue threads and ash but the sun continues in constant repetition of its slow and rather boring dance.

The man who told me about war said, it's the only thing that keeps us busy. I thought of your fingers on my back counting the vertebrae one by one. The only thing?

I poured a whiskey and soda watching the tree outside dissolve: light going backward   pushed to corners to the white sliver of wood around the door. Where was that river seething with light? I recall the banks menaced by wasps swollen on summer sap, a cement hollow stuck with their strange cradles a woozy stench of damp clay the blunt poison of water snakes.

In early morning when the sun is vague and birds are furious names of children float like smoke through the empty room: Ariadne, dark as seal skin Ian, fair-skinned baby Marina   Terrence   Alex   John after dinner   pulled back from talk of war and morals their names glow like light around a candle — Jack, my rampant youngest son Celia, my daughter who sings

The wind is fitful now: soot piles in the corners of new buildings, gulls stumble out of place in ragged branches to skim against a rise of pond water.

Two of them with chests like blond silk cornsilk hair stalled in traffic in the awful heat they smiled were they messengers delivering through the open window promises or lies or invitations? Boys are everywhere at noon they glide between parched cars bare broad shoulders color of chestnut colts