Issue 7:
Sky
Ron Gibson, Jr.
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Dreaming Nighthawks
The sun falls, sparking tongues across the surface of the Puget Sound, before sliding behind the jagged teeth of the Olympic Mountains, swallowed into the unknown. Knots of people descend ramps from the Coleman Ferry Dock, bound by forgettable moments. They pass under pools of faux-gaslight along the waterfront, ignoring the existence of panhandler’s outstretched hands, before untangling toward their secret realities.
The Spokane fills again with passengers and cars, groans softly as it separates from the dock, and cuts back across the dark Sound, lit like a floating Chinese lantern.
A hollowness returns.
Train bulls klink billy clubs against steel freight train containers. The Port of Seattle stirs like an insomniac – diesel-injected arms loading and unloading in streams of floodlight and voice. Tavern drunks stumble over the cold chalk silhouette of Mia Zapata. A group of vagrants crowd around a burning oil drum; voices echoing, until they rise unexpectantly to shouts.
A man walks away; his shadow stretching across columns of time-drained parking meters. He returns home, remembering the ghosts before wrong turns, when he and his father and the Palouse were one, and zips his pup tent up on the Viaduct-blindfolded sky; knife under his pillow, dreaming nighthawks.
~Ron Gibson, Jr.
Ron has also recently had work included in Andrei Codrescu's Exquisite Corpse and Driver's Side Airbag. Email.
© 2001 by Ron Gibson, Jr. All Rights Reserved.
© 2000-2002 by Cayuse Press. All Rights Reserved.
This page updated April 30, 2002.