on desire, it'd lived a poppy's meet me at the Casbah life;
but in the time before time was they were happier maybe, a black tux, an ivory satin gown (that
sort of smile that's an unrelenting lunule glaring amongst the crystal candlesticks, that sort
of rigorous mouth like a black tie, Mary Egypt remembers these thing inhabiting movies)
until a diamond stylus inured to tunes wounding the body sewed their tatters to the
scapular muscles;
but once patched together they were disreputable as that poppy, as problematically smoky, & when
they shuddered it was because they remembered fezzes congesting the speakeasies, Stutz
Bearcats, Humphrey Bogart, someone whispering huskily take a message to Garcia, &
minarets there in the menstrual twilight announcing God's absence through the palms;
& this photograph seemed as fraught with inside dope as the orange Ford taxi cab that just now
sloughs toward Mary Egypt who's loitering dissonantly on the corner blowing soap bubbles;
for lack of kisses she blows them between the needle-like bodies of fish that purl past threading &
knotting through her wings C sharps, typewriter ribbons, attenuated spit like strings of
pinprick white lights snarled in the cycadeoids;
(Johnny had observed the phenomenon often enough in that Jurassic edifice where he slumped in
the most visceral red chair while he thought about gulping lagers amongst humongous fern
fronds;
(& they called that joint the Egyptian Book of the Dead, it hadn't stopped raining there for over
10,000 years— however they never lacked for insects there, the insects showing traits of
gigantism & a taste for Stravinsky's most violent strains, they were violins pitched sharp as if
whipped); then
the fish they get euphoric on her & Mary Egypt can't take it any more, these mouths gulping hunger,
spewing bubbles, & the bubbles actually molten charm bracelets the fish disgorged—
because it is almost that time;
& the taxi floats past taking on water & churns past water snakes where they thread through the
scuttled dressmaker's dummy's wire pelvis & past these hirsute lilypads while it honks
dahlias, Storyville Blues, & a sewing machine in ecstasy;
but mostly it sounds like the mynah bird cracking wise at the Greek's deli: above the bouzouki's
tremolo it cracks aphorisms regarding the beautiful & the eternity of love, it sounds like the
old guy cracking beer bottles with a pop & a rasp;
& it's several weeks after midnight, in other words, almost that time, & Johnny lounges in the blue
Tiparillo smoke— as if everyone's lips were evaporating— & he's dissolved a priori, he's gray
eyes afloat between the brim of a brown fedora & the collar of a trenchcoat;
& the trenchcoat slumps frazzled & wrinkled & without ethics, without honor, without a thought for the
wide world's spasmodic splendor;
the world wasn't wide but deep;
& here comes the taxi to take Mary Egypt out...
La Giaconda & The Shadow, 2