“Teach Us to Number Our Days”

In the old neighborhood, each funeral parlor is more elaborate than the last. The alleys smell of cops, pistols bumping their thighs, each chamber steeled with a slim blue bullet. Low-rent balconies stacked to the sky. A boy plays tic-tac-toe on a moon crossed by TV antennae, dreams he has swallowed a blue bean. It takes root in his gut, sprouts and twines upward, the vines curling around the sockets and locking them shut. And this sky, knotting like a dark tie? The patroller, disinterested, holds all the beans. August. The mums nod past, each a prickly heart on a sleeve.