Fountain

by Matthew Dickman

And then I drank my coffee and then I drank my milk
and I was wearing the gray scarf you wore when you were naked
and the snow had been falling
into the backyard like some eldritch special effect
that stunned and moved the person watching it with his eyes
wide open and his mouth forming that human
vowel: Oh
Oh look how beautiful it is! You feel all firesides and pine trees,
majestic in your flannel pajamas. There is something
deeply spiritual about coffee and milk
and you wearing nothing but a scarf. And there is something
equally divine about sitting in the backseats of yellow cabs, the window
rolled down half an inch
so that the lights from the bridge can come in easily and rest
on your shoulders or lie like a dog in your lap, his breathing,
an electric current that hovers like a hand before it strikes. And then
I washed the dishes. And then I fried an egg
and I was listening to the song you love with the violins and saw
which could haunt a house forever. The saw being bent
at just the right angle between the knees
of the musician and the sound rising between them
like an animal, his head buried between two paws which are clipped
so the thing can’t tear apart the zoo keeper
in its fits of sorrow and bellowing pain. There is something awful
about how we walk past him eating
our popcorn and hotdogs, pointing at the baboons
and laughing because they’re almost sexual and the rainbow beauty
of their rear ends make us self-conscious. And then
I was walking alone with god and then I was walking alone
with no one so I could think about the movie
I had gone to see, where I sat alone and cried for the girl who had been
missing since March, eating red licorice
and staring up at the screen where two men were robbing a bank
while the third sat in a car outside, listening
to the radio, his left hand spinning a quarter
between his fingers like a turnstile. And then I walked down Burnside
and then I crossed the bridge. I threw a penny
over the side because my wish
was too big, too impossible for a fountain to bear. And then I walked
home where you were putting on your clothes,
where you were drinking coffee and making plans and picking out a bra.

• Read “Magic Eightball” by Matthew Dickman.
• For more poems, click here.