Shopping Like Fevered Dogs, by Travis Clarke (Campbell Poetry Circle)

Shopping Like Fevered Dogs

The rain was blanketing Pasadena like a somber Rose Parade, and I needed to put my life in boxes. Black crates, compartments, purge the memory of disorder with a box of albums. Purge the photo albums with a 12 x 16 cage.

There's a Crate & Barrel at the end of a long, imposing one way street.

Gray buildings, erected three stories.

Fortresses blocking out the clock tower on Colorado Avenue.

I knew it was time to open my wallet, and with an eyedropper tease out the sting.

On my way I stopped at The Gold Bug. Like Poe the haunting bells sounded my arrival.

I stared breathless at the window display of festooned antiques, all oak and deep precious metal.

I felt like an archaeologist forced to stare at mirrors, and my reflection was a $20 bill.

A consumer's opiate for an itch that wouldn't go away. Then I bought a box.

Records are old, by definition.

Black circles, concentric.

Or clear red, as if red is ever clear. Or porcelain white.

Why did I love to put on retro airs? Is this the itch again? Never a day without it.

I reclined in a leather chair that cradled my sore back like an expensive coffin and poured a glass of whiskey, stuck the needle on the groove and let John Coltrane serenade my supremely wanting ears.

A love supreme, carry me home.

I awoke to squawking an hour later.

Was it a tenor saxophone, or a crow outside my bedroom window?

Wishing for a swim but it's raining, and the silk tree in the yard is leafless.

I swim inside my thoughts instead. Caressing a ghost from not long ago, but long ago.

I lift up the glass and there's a ring.

The table is older than the music.

I curse at the absence of cleaning supplies.

Maybe I should go shopping. That would make everything new again.

Space is the place.

Somewhere, she's tripping over her sitar like a hailstorm wrecking glass.

She sits crosslegged and rocks back and forth.

She's alone, but she always was, more than most.

Or it just seemed that way. She keeps herself to herself.

Luck, loss, love, leave it running. The car, the turntable, the city you came from.

Plant a garden behind a tower that carves the landscape into distinction, that pins it to your landmark soul.

New placemats, new friends and new ideas. Old vices, old houses, middle-aged neighbors.

If I was Kilgore Trout it would all feel normal.

I think it does anyway. We invent our own version of Norman Rockwell.

A dog, a cat, a microphone. Shiny toys and clean air.

I take a breath so deep it catches in my chest, and I walk.

I walk until I can't feel a thing. This time I don't feel like shopping.