Along the thoroughfares
approaching town, astrologers were offering
to read the stars, already confident
in Sarah, Goddess of Fruit-Bearing Trees,
according to their zodiac, though she
was humanly stricken by the troubadours
intoning hymns, and blowing flutes
on every corner of the market square all
the time, constantly. In cages, parrots
praised the red day. A blacksmith with
his blisters pounded out a metal skeleton,
quenched it steaming in a stone bath,
then hung it hissing up among his death’s
heads, also metal, by a thread
above his public anvil. Other vendors
waved away the wasps and killer bees
descending toward the pots of jam, and also
lighting on the cantaloupes, and stalls
of nuptial melons, hundreds strong. Chickens
dangled from the hands of bloody men.
It was a judgment. No one touched the cabbages
but Elam, and the weird potatoes, though
his spirits soared along the passageways
of civil bargains, and winds through the blue
and glowing coals of fires in braziers
swept up the savory smoke of broiling dog,
and parts of antelope. One day,
he thought, after Saturday, he’d take
his chances with an urban life again.
Blue Islands, Blue as Ink 