Excerpts from:
Eastlake Cleaners When Quality & Price Count [a romance]
Janet Norman Knox
Murmuration
Bird warbled to bird, overheard,
eavesdropped on the party line,
wind whistling
poles crackling Alexander
Graham Bell.
Now twenty pairs
of claws clench
the telephone wire. Beaks preen.
Wings stretch iridescence, await
Joo-Eun, Silver
Pearl
to finish her afternoon
cleaning.
She will dust the parking lot
with gilded grain. Here
at the door to
Eastlake
Cleaners When Quality & Price
Count,
she coaxes crumbs to shy English Sparrows.
She whispers Korean vo-
wels like pearls.
They understand as one
wisdom, syllables
silver and ringing.
first published The Diagram
v. 5.5 2005
Follow the Bouncing Ball
Shuang ying zips into
Eastlake Cleaners
When Quality & Price Count.
The whites of four furred feet
and her sneakers, catch
my eye like bouncing
balls in a sing-along of This
Land
Is Your Land.
They rebound
in cheerful arches from word
to word along the refrain.
She could be you and she is
for an instant and then
she isn't. The door swings open
and she reappears, her dog
scurrying to the next sniff
in a dot-to-dot of smell,
until it loops back to number
one. Home. She is a slight
variation of you, wearing black
with white accents, little dog
pulling
her faster down a sidewalk,
her muscles tense against a
leash,
a line taut between white nose
of dog
and heels leaning back, dug
into concrete. Across the land,
women are pulled home
by thoughts of cleaning or
cooking
rice, corn, rye, wheat,
grains of peace. We could
be them and we are.
first published Red Mountain Review
