Sight Unseen
by D.E. Kern
A second-floor window is high enough for a vantage
point yet low enough for any number of concerning
questions as to whether all this ambition is healthy
or a damning desire for convergence with God. But
there is no doubting the beauty, the cloudless sky
laughing at the stalled traffic, the spinning wheels
of commerce in the distance where they can do no
harm to starlings lined up on the terrace railing like
old ladies at church. Just the same I gird my loins
with Neruda, polish wings with these essential oils
in Whitman’s beard, shut the door on my memories
of falling by turning up Bob Dylan, silently ponder
the things we talk about when we talk about love. A
city sprawls by pushing its unwanted to the margins
lays bricks for walls adjoined to nothing, leaves the
distinction of high point to a modest minaret mirroring
this library’s discomfort—the self-conscious tidiness
afforded by some rare open space amid the malaise
sprawled out across these generations content with less
than what their children need. Dirt devils spin along
rows fertilized by brown bodies since Alarcón set his
colonizing foot here, sing hoarse duets concerning
the ironic beauty of pain with vortices pushing broken
concrete and eviction notices down alleyways where
the ghosts of Tom Joad toss empty bottles of añejo
await the chance to dance in the perennial grace of rain.
The sun’s pulse translates into waves atop the asphalt
while an emissary from November dances through the
canopy of a palo verde, and I stand amazed by its gift
with language. The interstate bows around this city like
an indifferent lover—entranced by its curvature but not
contending with its gaze—and the traffic jerks along
these spider veins like models in HO scale entertaining
a perpetually 8-year-old facsimile of God, crashing the
3:10 to Yuma just to watch it burn. Clouds shaped like
circus animals cast bloated shadows of politicians across
this board designed to fold into fourths, and as the wind
kicks up the integrity of every spine, including mine, is
called into question. The distant mountains cast down
their hoodoo voodoo and reminders that the high ground
is indeed relative. The pious starlings chirp at interlopers
who violate the sanctity of their perch while the reflection
off a steel table pilfers the clarity concealed deep inside
the many layers of this frame. Just two beats lift objects
heavier than air into the sweet void between all the chaos
and the sheer but stubborn shell between here and heaven
and there is a stark reminder concerning the intoxication
laced within the fabric of clarity, the freeing weightlessness
of getting high, only to realize that this is only the second
floor of a modest asylum, a sanctuary from the enraging
sight of the patients selling off cures to obtain the disease
another departing soul shrugs off the bodies’ fear of flying.
D.E. Kern is an author and educator from Bethlehem, PA. His work has appeared in Appalachian Review, Big Muddy, Reed and Sierra Nevada Review, among others. He teaches English at Arizona Western College.
