Saint Anthony Main, 26 May 2006
Despite earnest desires of the hospitality folks competing to
snare the Wound Ostomy and Continence Nurse’s Society
the Minneapolis skyline exists as a drawing in sunset, drawn
from memory, rendered as the seeing-double-dreams of
pock-faced indigenous drunks mummified in bubble wrap
Scenes shot across a dammed river called Father of Waters
from a 19th century carte de viste sold to speculators back east
spuming promise below the engineered abutments of the damned
through what were once the unrestrained rapids of a pious saint
well-laid cobblestones distinguish Main Street from a blind alley
A view in frames girds the A-Mill from toppling into backwaters
atop a retro-fitted multiplex that plays continuous-loop films
about lives in decline and characters assuaged only by delusion
How many frames per second can a human eye see is not the
same as how many frames per second will make motion fluid
And how many frames per second make a movie stop flickering?
Suspended in a corner of a fixed pane is the wingless thorax of
a beheaded bee robbed of all but its translucent abdomen, its
unaccounted eyes vibrate to the jubilant voices in the café below
decamped in a silken matrix secreted from sightless spiders