Passing Through Providence

Downtown dead trout
float like silver dollars
on the river
the Narragansett called
Woonasquatucket—
it slices through the town
Roger Williams called
Providence.

From its clabbery banks
I hear them in their workboots
Stumbling, boarding busses,
Scratching instant lottery tickets
while others have given up
on games of chance
or fumble through pockets
for twice laundered bus passes.

They see signs:
STOP signs, neon Budweiser signs,
signs for tarot readings & fortune ladies.
Search for signs in styrofoam coffee cups
or starlit street puddles
quarreling because they’ve forgotten the next stop.

Below arteries of interstate
amateur philosophers & phlebotomists
spiking their arms in bewildered ecstacy,
checking in at burnt out motels
where they order cheap porn
if they can’t sleep off the spins
or watch a program about a man without a face
if they can’s stop fretting
the creatures crawling in their beds.

Across the street is a skinny girl
looking to find a plastic surgeon & an eighth of weed
Her reflection’s a hunched woman grasping
a book of saints in her papery hands
We look at each other and her—a relic
assuming the words have run from the pages
I see them streaming down the street.

On the corner of Fountain Street
is a man who talks to passing prostitutes
And a dark, brown-eyed girl terrified
because she can’t forget
old men like these who’ve come inside her.
I didn’t let her blow me,
It wasn’t a question, really
But his smirk is brown & his fly
is open.

A gray prophet preaches on Snow
Happiness is within you
Count your blessings
Grasp your destiny
he doesn’t know the girl
on Fountain street.
He’s so convinced of his words
he doesn’t notice his frostbitten
hands or the rueful bark of the
hobbling Labrador.

At the bar is a soldier
drinking a beer called Narragansett,
a proud American in a flannel shirt
and a self-proclaimed fascist, drunk
afraid he might fall off the barstool
or miss the late bus.

In the café is a teary-eyed girl
sitting straight and poised
before a yellowed novel
waiting for a boy
she met online
wondering if we’d all become monsters.

Well, it’s not me,
I’m reading a story in TIME
about a boy from Nepal
who sat for months beneath
the gnarled bodhi
he must have waited
so still & poised
Was he sad?
Did he think we’d all become monsters?

In the town called Providence
is a scruff-bearded man
half-recognizing his face
in storefront windows
wishing he could say something about all this
he tosses his dead-fish into the river.