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.