~ 2009
Somewhere behind dumpsters, ruined wind guards and the parking lot last touched since Nixon could sign anything right with a fountain pen, a panel van’s headlights strike off a row of obelisks—aluminum panels, Plexiglas and spring-fed latches that creaked and stripped scum from around the fingernails. Row by row they are mustered, broken rank and wheeled about, electrical cables and fuse boxes spooling behind. One after another they stop—yards at a time, unfolding by thirds—across the Rustoleum-tainted grass, the sun-spotted asphalt. A blowtorch nozzle is primed with a scrap of denim and set alight. Glass, blown and quenched in a cold vat, is charged with a valve from the tank, brass threads locking home with wires and zip ties.
Midway. Late admissions. Sword swallowers. Information criers. Circuits are drawn: colors and power routes to arbitrary sectors: yellow, red, dragonfly blue. I overstep the first. Skirt with the second and third. Protective grilles, marker LEDs and canvases blink, drawn against the mosquitos. The hinges of his glasses catch their ignition: Bakelite and tortoiseshell eroded by perspiration, misting fryer grease, hairspray. The empty electrical spool rattles in my hand. In the mask of the crowd, no further exchanges need be had. Ink smudges. Hands graze. Fingers settle. Lips clasp. Cigarillo tang. Valvoline sweat. The midway breaks out in laughter and hives. A pair of manager's keys and a Dewalt swings, tinkles faintly on a carabiner. After the fact I must have made several turns, scratched several blanks, drew short straws—the cocktail ones—flicked away by the drinkers from overpriced shots, pinwheeling across the gravel and the turf where they settled—tried to answer my sneakers and the smoggy moon. He retreats with the first shifters, swimming with his tabulator and ticket puncher among families clenching chocolate churros and stuffed bluebirds. At midnight he returns, slipping between the rest of us lighting up against the dying flywheels of Honda generators and canned ditties: packing rolling papers tight with saguaro bitten pulp from a little ziplock…bracing our bodies to exhume the afterburn—tossing our gaze up to the palms, interlaced—cursing them by scattered monikers: respiratory linguine, Reagan’s showgirls, ideation, blindsiding, rapture.