Me, Minh, Sandra and Adam used to take road trips to small towns. I wrote this after one of those trips. Antique I. South 95 is the smoothest highway I remember being on. It is not cobblestone. The St. Croix turned a new bend a few thousand years ago. All these towns we pass, they offer rows upon rows of antique stores, hoping old memories and smells are enough to keep a body alive. II. I feel like a blue polyester suit and scuffed suede shoes. The eyelashed store clerk has a crush on me, I can tell because she watches me closely to make sure I don't steal anything. Porcelain sambos, eternally lifting slices of watermelon. Mushroom-hatted chinks with eyes slitted evil like the head of a miner's pickaxe. Heavy wooden indians, their hatchets levelled at scalping position. These are the only things in the store that haven't collected dust. III. A dream. A young couple lie on the floor of an antique shop which has old clocks as its specialty. They feel the frayed curls of the blue rug under their bare backs, they lay next to the towering grandfather clock made from a single walnut tree, in that very shop. They whisper to each other, tongues swing like pendulums counting the intensity of a second: you are my chipped porcelain angel tired of sitting amongst rose colored glass and Smurf tumblers. They whisper: you are the magical green brass doorknob etched with layers of intertwining ellipses that all the old doors in the world are lonely for. 1997

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