It’s as if Clearing the Table were sequestered in an isolated village without running water. All the gangsters infiltrating the police. No one left to feed the chickens, the delayed ransom fluttering. Someone's going to have to winter in Sicily. Someone's going to have to cozy up to the new government.

What can be done with the foreground, whispering sisters of critical saints arising? It’s a necklace of birds, upended as seeds and coming home with blankets of partly lifted back-in-the-box investments.

I can’t see you right now. I’m eating. Some things are still sacred though I’m not one of them. As long as I ripen, I won’t expect you to participate further. The smell of olives and eucalyptus leaves wafts not. Not one damn bit of my future in it. I can’t even taste my droopy mustache.

Suddenly there’s a turf dog pissing beside the pathway’s hidden agenda. One of these days we're going to have to pay attention.

Terrible windows. Children barking. I might have taught them not to listen. Or taught them to listen, badly. I might have overlooked their anticipation of a certain kind of emotion that seems to need to rescue itself more than it does us.

And you still expect my imprisonment to release you. Just watch.

The war is full of answers, but the questions simply fly away after dropping their load. The hunger replaces the emptiness in its belly.

I can’t eat you right now. I’m still seeing. As long as you ripen, I won’t expect to participate you further. It’s a gift and the rescuers are never rescued.

It takes place in a hill town with no mayor. The giant speaks three languages, Upper Pot and Lower Pot and Maybe I Can Go Home Someday. He includes the tender fat limbs of many a youthful configuration lingering beneath absent parents’ juicy morsels of fear.

It’s as if the table itself could hold the ancient scars in its sturdy pretense. No one seems to know the price of beans, but we pay it. There’s already another tree with its heart missing and we eat upon it.

I am an officer of the window and let the guilty go. If they don’t come back, they’re innocent. The only way to pay is to go along.

 

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