bio-littoral

(cave: waiting for a moment)

Memory is a loyal companion, and there is infinite storage for more. A storm communicates in eccentric ways: thunders intense local language reaching full capacity, electric veins of the troposphere, demanding attention, fueling friction. From a clouds dense concentration of suspended water and ice-thoughts you were blinded by the nimbus and lost your handlebars.

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(his) cache: dwelling in San Francisco in a small Columbus Avenue hotel room. Sitting in a gray metal folding chair at an old wooden desk propped up against a cracked white wall. An unmade bed is the only other piece of furniture in the room. The one window is open and it faces east. Flocks of seagulls are flying by the window and screaming into the stillness of the afternoon. Nearby is the salty bay, foghorns are sounding. A red cable car slowly rolls down the long avenue and stops at an intersection. The driver rings a quick, catchy rhythm on the bell. When the bell stops, speak to the wall.

(listen to a) cackle: return to Massachusetts to finish building a snowman named Friday beneath Februarys sun, hear the cutting metallic sound of a parkas zipper coming up the chest in a warm room before going out into a white blizzard, eat fried dough for breakfast with fishermen and wash it down with the instant coffee accent of New England, go back to high school, and then walk away.

(athletic) cacophony: return to pitch seven innings of Little League as mothers sit in wooden stands cheering on their superstars and contemplating the tragedy of their marriages, stand with wide wale corduroy legs on sleepy Salem sidewalk imbibing the ghosts behind the windows of the House of Seven Gables, ride the red trolley over the Charles River and voyage into Harvard Square in search of graduate student acid, and go to the summer house we didnt have.

(desert) cactus: return to get wicked sunburned and stony lost on gossamer dunes of Cape Cod, lay in the back seat of a Hertz rent-a-car as father drives through western Mass oak tree canopy night listening to the windshield wipers and to the gears shift play fantastic flashlight tag in the still, suburban, dry, humid night of neighborhood splintering summer laughter into the p.m., sit on the swing of my elementary school and flashback to kickball screams, scraped knees, and the goose-bump boyhood awe of girls.

(a) cad: return to let the autumn air bite my mind as I laugh at naked branches while visiting Walden Pond, eat soft shell crab in a hamburger bun while standing barefoot in sandy August yellow day, stagger home, stumble home, slather home immortal teenage drunk swimming through air down the middle of Commonwealth Avenue back to rising sunny side up bed in Brookline, sit on Marblehead rickety docks by the lighthouse with a sinker line and the whole afternoon and deep blue Atlantic.

(orange) cadaver: return to hit homeruns of imagination of the mind into the bleachers by the Green Monster, soothe my eyes on the parquet wooden floor of the Boston Garden as number "33" sinks one from the three-point line, pool hop and then walk into Woolworths to use their towels to dry off from head to toe and then walk out, and smash a front porch ugly pumpkin into October death laughing like a scarecrow with hat falling off.

(open) caddy: return to pick up the fallen branches on Fremont St., tell bro, sis (rip), mother, and father, tell it to bro (rip), sis, mother, and father, tell it all to bro, sis, mother, and father.

(sea) cadence: return to take the cats out of the lobster traps, pour Budweiser on the barnacles that were crushed, kiss all the beautiful briny starfish whose legs were torn off, and row the boat to roll your pants up seaweed low tide islands and do what boys do.

(an awol) cadet: return to let go of my name and wash the body in a Swampscott hotel, wander into the woods and talk to the leaves over my left flannel shoulder. Stand on the widows walk of my skull and wait one last time for that ship to sail into Gloucester.

(to) cadge: return to Massachusetts to leave the last chapter unfinished like a ceramic bowl of chowder on a restaurants empty corner table.

(melting) cadmium: turn on a Sony transistor radio, and it plays molonius thunking on a piano. Get up from the desk and begin to brush teeth over the rooms little porcelain sink. The hot water faucet is turned all the way up, and steam rises from the sink. Wind flows into the room and swirls the steam around. After wiping mouth dry with a wash cloth, go over to the window and climb outside onto the fire escape. The Chinese New Year parade makes its way down Columbus Avenue.

(chorus from sub-sleeper dream)_________________________________________________________________________

(imploded) cadre: return to other moments, under your eyelids, a finale where even the soil will be in chorus. We are not waiting, were just here, like the Tenderloin. While the ghost signs there will fade, once brushed, the paints impression will not be taken away. I understand many things happened in the East. Is the West what you want? Cardinal directions reap remorse without the pastoral familiarity of what you call the past. You took your blue eyes out to see watercolors of another region, the eyes you replace them with are in the same skull. The arrangement of your crooked teeth tells me how confused youve been. Smiling you hold black lettuce in your hand. You must realize what you desire, before you can empty it from your body.

— Jonathan Hayes