Introducing the Hardline According To
     ...Ofer Maimon

Outline of a pome i won't be able to finish. It runs about thus. Sixteen spokes. And the grey sheets of rain the threateningly dark green forests and the shattered earth and wagons rocking in the sleet creaking wheels and sixteen spokes And the toddlers playing hide and seek in the mud tent canvas stiff and cold in the predawn raising them slick heavy poles the wheel repairman mutter under a frozen breath and over them broken Sixteen spokes. The color of blood. Ruby Soho streaming through the paper walls, my neighbor listening to the radio, having his habitual breakfast on vodka and cigarettes. And I can finish it as much as I could start it.

Not brown not blue and certainly not green her eyes are black mirrors they mirror anything and everything the deep dark green valleys of her Kentucky childhood banjos clear frosty mornings and mountain blues Florida alligator poaches and swamp hues her eyes are black mirrors desolate trucker stop motels at midnight Delancey street in NYC at first sunlight over Williamsburg bridge The one time somebody called her “nigger” and meant it. Her first miscarriage. Her only daughter born. To a man that went to Iraq. Signed on the day after 9/11 and never came back. She misses his smile and his hands trough her hair. brown hands Not brown not blue and certainly not green her eyes are black mirrors the rainbows in my heart as I walk up to her. So I walk up to her.