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Dawn. Life here is not
how you have heard, although I just walked through the waft of garbage from an exploded bag of formless filth a truck let fall and someone hit. Hump-winged with craning, blackened neck, a chimney sits atop a brownstone house like the lost eagle standard of a Roman legion slaughtered in shaded, Teutonic woods. Other protrusions are watchful, vent-pipes long-closed, satellite dishes, piles of brick, their dull flashing stringy with black-tar vines like blood. Today I’d welcome even a discouraging word. The sound of a child unwrapping candy, is three clever birds, peeling foil from a fallen taco. They pause as I near, but do not leave, pink blossoms of pork revealed between cilantro leaves’ shading green. A church, in gas-station letters, says SUN WORSHIP 11AM. There is no more fitting god, saluted daily from birth to Icarusian fall, when live swifts sweep insects from the rays, and man’s crude, inanimate flocks at last go dark.
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Benjamin HarnettBenjamin Harnett is a historian, fiction writer, poet, and digital engineer. His works have appeared recently in Pithead Chapel, Brooklyn Quarterly, Moon City Review, and Tahoma Literary Review. His story “Delivery” was chosen as Longform’s “Story of the Week.” He holds an MA in Classics from Columbia University and in 2005 co-founded the fashion brand Hayden-Harnett. He lives in Beacon, NY with his wife Toni and their pets. He can be found most days on Twitter.com: @benharnett. He works for The New York Times. |
