A summer in the old city

The pidgeons were too friendly, they

would come up to me even when I was in one of my moods

and try to talk to me, and I

would say to them, “Why, I’ve

got nothing to say to you. You shouldn’t be here, you

could be anywhere else, but here, and

just cuz others feed you

doesn’t mean I will,

you sellouts, you

who can

fly!”

I knew a place where you could get

a beer and a cigar for 4.99 in the old city, and

on my days off I would wander between the tabby

bricks and drink in the courtyard and try

to keep the smoke from the

playing kids.

Done, I would

Float down the street in my hipster slacks,

and think in verse, walking

past the fort and into the art galleries,

dotting in and out, timid, feeling

like I shouldn’t be in such

reverent spaces,

turning away,

dull ache.

There was one artist who only painted

wine. I think we would have
gotten along, you see, I am Catholic. wine

bottles in stacks, with fading light, with

illuminate corks, with fat, thin, long

snouts, barreling upwards,

engorged. He said he

used to paint only reds,

would paint apples, wagons, but

discovered that every time

he painted wine, he

sold out.

Cathedral bells extolled the hour.

Dehydrated and buzzed, I

always stopped at the gallery del Mar.

There was a painting there, of

a girl – cliché! – of vibrant color and red hair,

she had no eyes, covered in bangs, but she always

looked straight through me and I shied away, she

was too real, all-knowing, her violent strokes

slashing at my vision, but peace, and

infatuation, so I

asked how to pronounce the artist’s name:

“Josef Kote” (as in coat).

Funny that I had expected something else, something

sublime, something French.

“She was his daughter, beautiful

Isn’t she?”

I would say thanks, then

stumble into the day – 5 p.m. – my

buttoned shirt soaked with sweat, the

remnants of tobacco still bitter on my lips, I

would walk to my sauna car and drive home, 

and wade into the water, asleep.