Steve Macone
To a Child Dying Old

We don't grow up, our fuzz simply changes
places on our bodies while we're looking
at each other. Steal some stoplight glances
from the fold-down mirror. Find what becomes
your day between presentable for work
and read-ending strangers in their "My child
is an honor roll student at..." sticker.

When once a cartoon cave did imposed those
cliché red eyes that, in the onyx and
without iris, told you they were looking
only into yours. But like an artful
photograph, they produce the same effect
to all who view them. You never feared the
darkness but the carmine emerging out
of naught. Now alone. The listless commute,
which stare at you's attached to something you
deduce with grown-up logic: cars. They are
break lights ahead, traffic. Always staring.

My eyes, like porous chimney bricks, they char
with the calidity of the world as
my threshold attachés take it all in.
Around them you can see black collecting.

<< Back to Issue 7, 2004