1982 Mohr 1982

Bill Mohr Hidden Proofs, Bombshelter Press: Los Angeles, CA, 1982.

In Line at Pancho's Tacos

At first I don't recognize him

walking through the door;

he owes me $75 from a year ago,

offers me his hand. I don't shake.

We talk. He's married and divorced,

going back to his first wife

whom he left nodding out at the piano.

"You still living at the same place?"

he asks, writing it down. "I'm expecting

a big check from back East, 2500

by the end of the week."

"You got a phone?" I ask.

"No, I'm sort of moving around

right now." I grin, "Must be hard

for those social security checks

to keep up with you." He orders

a bean and cheese burrito,

then cancels it. I follow him outside.

New Jersey license plates.

One night he dropped a beer bottle

on the kitchen floor. Mid-morning

I walked in half-asleep, barefoot.

I missed a glass blade by a toe-length.

*

In fiction a writer's not supposed

to use real people. Your job's to create

new characters. In poetry, why lie -

if your're looking for a roommate,

don't let Nick DeNucci move in.

~~

The Murals

Halfway between my bedroom and the beach,

figures in a mural dash past a sign

No Cars on the Pier

towards their friends sitting under striped umbrellas.

Pants, caps, old bathings suits. It's mediocre

but passing the bus stop in front,

I heard a girl, "Mommy, why don't the people

have any faces?" "That way they can be anybody."

The faces on the theater wall

across from Rancho Park Golf Course

have been painted over. A huge human skull

was in the center of a landscape of mountains and cactus,

or was the sacred heart of Jesus, crowned with thorns,

in the center and the skull off to the side,

approached by a skeleton riding a horse, bareback,

his only clothes a serape and bandolier,

followed by a pilgrimage in drought?

Body-surfing as the tide hurls in, my swim trunks

fill with sand. Where's my ring? Maybe I left it

on the blanket. Scrambling, dripping, I lift the towel,

check pockets. Coins, house keys. My fingers sift

the blanket's border. Another gift lost.

Last week I left a sweater in a restaurant;

the week before, a striped shirt at a picnic;

sunglasses, and twenty dollars fell out of my pocket

at a Whiskey concert. This is dumber than the time

I left a ball-point pen in a basketful of laudry.

No use rushing home. If I accidently pulled it off

and dropped it by the telephone, it'll be there when I get back.

The longer I wait, the more I hope. The last notch

of sunlight disappears behind the Santa Monica mountains.

I stop beside my favorite tree, the southwest side

of Fourth and Ocean Park. Nobody knows what kind

of tree it is. Loquats, my landlord says, but Bob says, "No,

when I was a kid, there was a loquat tree beside my sandbox.

They fell on my head all summer." Maybe it's custard fruit,

sweet enough to eat with coffee in the morning

and skip the sugar. After they fall, they spoil

quickly, between a quarter-moon and the half.

Another mural down the street has also diappeared -

on the side of a two-story house was a corner

of a galaxy, unconstellated stars flickering

around ringed planets; at the bottom, a hand

framed at the wrist, was cocked, about to flip

a folded paper airplane into proceding darkness.

Back home, I search my desk and kitchen counter.

No ring. I walk outside. Loss is the only memory

that meditates on other loss. Or could the same be said

for love? Once again, abstraction expands, fails.

Before I go to sleep, I search for the ring

and again when I wake up. No luck.

Beneath my cut-off jeans on the wooden chair,

stiff with ocean salt, a whit shadow of sand

has fallen as the cloth dried. I sweep

into an ordinary day of letters, packages,

invoices, typesetting, paste-up. Fish for dinner

and after washing dishes, a peach.

Outside, a white cat in heat

crosses the alley. A cricket thrums

from a fence post smothered by morning glory.

Craig's left a note, Bill, would you mind

throwing out the newspapers. O.K. I pick

them off the card table, and smile. There's the ring.

(Back to Sources)

 Kelyn Roberts 2017