Sundial
Poetry by Kevin Connolly
Photography by Lux Poly
You drop into conversation like an
afternoon dives into an empty swimming
pool—gamely but down an element.
It’s a spring day and a short week,
the streetcar’s cavern backlit with heads
& arms: a turkey shoot, a roach motel.
You say you feel qualified to talk
about the service here, having served up
so many slices of yourself over the years.
You’ve grown weak from bowling olives
at free radicals and chained pit bulls—
their days (both of them) are numbered.
I have my rant about transience and intransigence.
You like to run down the simile as a viable
artistic strategy—you call it “sex through
a sheet,” but the way you call it that
makes it seem so vividly sexy: the sheet
with my name on it, the sad euphemism
lugeing its way toward the gap, the
downspout, spinning into unknown.
I was told this was how they vote in Japan,
but I’m not sure I believe a word they say
anymore: that raft of rabble and nogoodniks,
their avowed allegiance to the way things stand.
And so we drift through the hours, like the
fireball scours the skin of the bank tower:
tireless rehearsal of the sad scenes in tow.
