The Stranger

City of angels--
a few dying palms curved
like tiki torches, blocks
of apartments with no lawns
only children and their mothers
and others without references
who couldn't or wouldn't answer
for their past. I lived with two men,
one who had a little European car
that didn't run. He left it
hunkered at the curb, the doors
unlocked. I didn't stop
the children from climbing in.
First the car was their home.
Little animals came to live
with them, bright-eyed and stuffed.
Then they played fort, opened
the sunroof and raised their flags. More
and more came, a stream of children
flowing through the car, now a stage,
percussion instrument, cave,
pirate ship sailing down a river.
It seemed natural the way
they scrambled sideways
through the windows. I don't know
what I hoped for, maybe
for the ark of pure imagination
to rise into night. One quiet
morning he dragged me to the curb
where the car lolled in the shallows
on tires at half mast, seat wool foaming,
jangled wires blooming under the dashboard,
tattered remnants of a flag still hanging
from the antenna and told me, it's ruined
and you let them do it and I shrugged it off
which I could do with a smile, hey, we
could always make it into a flowerpot,
since he was in love with me and
I belonged to the other. By then
Machine Gun Mick and Ruth had moved in
down the street. I was dumb enough to ask
about his name and Ladonna
drilled me with a glare, it means
he knows how to take care of business.
The first time I saw him he was burning
fever bright, and Ruth was white as bone,
a shock of winter flowers, white
as drowned Ophelia. He would leave
her home a lot and show up,
leaning in the door jamb, saying
something like, You should've heard her
screaming and begging me to take it out;
but I told her it's Saturday night
and I'm not taking no cockroach out.
That was his way of coming on; he would
hold the roach without a clip, let it burn
down, burning his fingers to keep my mouth
on the reed of smoke, my lips pressed
against his thumb and finger.
And I thought of the tattoo of blood, the
purple seam stitched on the inside
with the breath stopped and the heart
whirring like a sewing machine.
Once he asked me to go with him
to the bedroom. I didn't say yes
and I didn't say no; I just followed
him in. His arm cinched, his shirt off,
I knew he was trying to get close
to me but he couldn't find the vein.
The needle stumped up and down
his limb and the soundless stream
of blood rolling and coiling,
rivered his arm. Then he was gone,
miles away, worked out onto slow water,
rising on the lap and roll,
and I thought of my blood,
distant and swathed in skin, except once,
after a long flight into nowhere,
voices like cables cast into the black
sea, blood sounding its guttural clicks,
my skull moist as ripe fruit, and before
the ambulance came, the stranger knelt,
my head cradled on his knees.
It seemed easy to die, smooth,
floating out on the dark with
no pain. Death is forgiveness;
I learned that then, but he
cupped my skull between his hands,
turned my head so the first raw hiss
of air--as if love were formed
of air's whispered stutter,
creak and shudder, bellows heave--
flowed in like gratitude
to him whose blood-stained
fingers I never knew.

Marsha de la O