& just then the town seemed more than ever like a Mesozoic morass, its restaurants all reeking
catfish, & decaying Da Vinci landscapes loomed— it was frightening how they loomed! you
could hear the cabbie remark on the rocks, how they looked like ears & there Mary Egypt sits
timeless amongst the rocks & looking for a kiss;
& Johnny feels like an aficionado gulping espresso from a dirty cup— as if he actually had a face,
not something ersatz sutured;
how many stitches had he taken? how many chances had he missed? how many windows had his
fist shattered allowing the shadows to rush in, back then when movies first created night— &
he liked to hiss these scars on my back are Trilobites okay they needed someplace to sleep
it off;
he didn't mean much by it, just ossification & night terrors like this 3-D screen distending, its wings
thrashing faces watery, wings like an extinct bird's— which is mostly what he feels like paying
the tab with a fin— & like venetian blinds creaking exhausted from witnessing sheer lust that
often amongst the ashtrays inside the reptilian buildings— until his whole existence reeked
gingkos— then he arrives;
how would they be troubled by this beauty into which the soul with all its maladies has passed?
the cabbie asks, though not in those words exactly, he actually says So do you like baseball
or Stormy Weather, the latter phrased in a different key & as a question, the way it'd sound
through a pawnshop trumpet;
& Mary Egypt thinks I've got the answer: I am rag wings (the fabric was 60% a piano's black keys
melted down, it was 40% a movie poster for Casablanca scissored into a collage;
& they called that jazz;
& Mary Egypt arrives;
La Giaconda & The Shadow, 3