EARL S. BRAGGS
THE PICTURE TAKER’S POCKETBOOK
for
Linda Hull’s China
On a street as dark as it gets in the dead of a winter snow
in Jersey City, Chicago of all the places that forces
itself upon the sweet and innocent doll
looking for a clock to pass the time
between the long fingers of a wild uncaring wind.
But this street corner is not the same one
that held China so close and tight every night
this week, last week, and the week before
she started hanging out with the red lady mannequins
strolling unwanted avenues, kicking down the faces
of senseless crowds gone
it seems like much of the seven hours since she left
the green house
buried under the porch bench, under the kitchen sink,
behind the stove, in the refrigerator.
It’s 1973 and it’s a Philco that now freezes China
into crystal balls too large to fit under the field jacket
she wears robe-like, black and cold and alone,
completely covering the courtroom judge and a 17-man jury,
blind as a cat’s eyes covered in masking tape
and dull razor blades
shaving the skinny white legs of early summer in New Jersey,
Chicago.
But this is a poem about winter and winter is a bag lady
overdressed in men’s clothing, wearing a green felt-tip fedora
holding on to a tree-bending wind that refuses kindness
even to the most beautiful photograph in any picture taker’s
pocketbook.
I hope China finds her Lou Reed beneath
the Velvet Underground tunnel rats
and raccoon caps of powder at 10 cents a pop
down at the Five-and-Dime on any late night talk show
Johnny Carson in a white Cadillac Sedan DeVille Fleetwood
taking every corner slow, nice, and easy.
The streets are calling her name in the name of the Lord
of unforgiving nights howling wolves of aloneness
that go on singing the Satisfaction song long after
the music stops playing the Stones
and her last quarter drops at the bottom of three songs
already played a thousand times in China’s mind
so she leaves a partly eaten egg roll
in that partly empty restaurant to face
what she has never been able to find long enough to keep
her partly warm. The only heat is up from the sewer
and the smell of fried shrimp and rice is the sweetest air
on the avenue tonight.
