Miami, 1989
The moving vans
keep on the go in
this little neighborhood.
The rental companies
make special mailings
advertising low rates on
half-day rentals.
They know.
Their advertisements are practical
and somber like a funeral home bill.
On Sundays,
the men fill one house
and then another.
Their slow procession
cuts along the sidewalks,
moving between the houses,
as if among tombstones.
From the houses, they carry
stacks of books under their arms,
strap end chairs to car roofs,
fill trunks with tennis rackets and roller blades,
and beach chairs that sometimes spill last summer's sand
over a black carpeted spare tire.
You can walk into any house here
and sit on a dead friend's sofa,
watch a dead man's TV,
eat breakfast
at a dead lover's table.
You'll water a fern that survives him.
A time or two, usually just after the funeral,
you can look over at a chair,
and see him in it.
You can listen to a record
and hear him da-da-ing along.
You can read from a book
and see him in his chair
the book laying open on his lap,
as he nods in and out of sleep
and back-lit by a shimmering
Sunday afternoon.
Other times can you drink
from a pink flamingo coffee mug
and see him sitting cross-legged
on a tightly-cornered bed,
with bruise-purple blotches
spread like storm clouds
across his tight, pale scalp,
his dark eyes resting at the bottom
of their sockets, like sunken ships,
as the jagged corners of his bony body
break the surface of bleached white blanket.
But soon enough,
the visions stop.
That chair
becomes any chair.
That book
becomes any book.
Around here,
Sundays are moving days.
The rest of the week
is for dying.
Written during the late 1980's AIDS crisis in Miami.
