Brendan Constantine
Big Sky
I dreamt it was raining guns. I don’t mean the
air
was filled with gunfire, but the sound of guns
falling on the house and through windows
to pile on the floor. I could hear them thunking
against cars, triggering alarms which were all
but drowned out. They all must’ve been empty,
the guns I mean, because none of them fired
and though I’ve never owned one, I understand
they can go off by themselves if kept loaded.
Toward the end I watched a band of painted
Indians
careen down my street, the braves and their
mustangs
crying out as they fled the impossible storm. I
woke
to a Russian opera on television. This was
followed
by the news and a weatherman saying a system
had passed over the city during the night, but
no
rain. Today would be clear.
And so it was.
I worked at my desk, mailed letters, and later
bought a newspaper. The big headline said
THOUSANDS FLEE AS LILI STRENGTHENS.
Lili was a hurricane, whirling through Cuba,
smashing
homes and bending palm trees like cocktail straws,
but I learned all that later. At the time I
thought
of the morning’s music, of pistol whipped
horses elaborating into the great Lily Pons
performing the Rose And The Nightingale.
I could see her, dead as sheet music since 1976,
now recomposed, rising out of the sea perhaps,
to frighten Havana with her white soprano.
Just once I would like to turn on the television
to a report of dead artists rising from their
graves
and taking the streets; police and soldiers
fleeing
like children when their guns have no effect.
I’ll
turn up the sound, unlock my door, and make
coffee.
The people who report the news always look
a little dazed, as though each day they learn
again
they must make the truth pleasant. They even
dress
like they’re at parties. I want to see them in
what
I’m wearing: an untucked shirt, a pair of jeans,
sneakers, no make-up. As though they’ve just
been out buying a paper and now are sharing
what they’ve read. Feathers and war paint
would be an improvement. I don’t know if Indians
wore paint very often or named their children
for they’re affinities, the way they used to in
movies,
but I might not feel like such a target if news
people
lived that way. Good
evening, I’m Drives Two Cars –
and I’m Eats Like A
Bird - the Six O’Clock New
begins now. Painter
Francisco Goya, considered
the Father of Modern
Art, rose from his tomb
this afternoon and
went on a rampage, defacing
buildings and blocking traffic for hours. Now
with the weather here
is Never Looks At The Sky.
Copyright (c)Brendan Constantine, 2005. All rights reserved.
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