TUMBLE OF WORDS REUBEN CANNING FINKEL

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good god almighty I almost miss the bus again, gunning down Water Street
coat in hand, more than a little worried by those heaps of raincloud stuck
above Southside like sheets of dryer lint & already there’s a crowd

 

huddled behind the convention centre right below that awful iceberg mosaic (everyone shuffling side to side, apsy as old poplar), their bodies dwarfed

by massive glass panels, flat slabs of steel grey, vinyl squares & dim light

 

anyways, route ten’s stalled for a minute or more because the driver’s eating—

as a starved man would, absolutely ripping this meal to shreds—a ham sandwich, stuttering between bites at dispatch for double time; so I step back, count quarters,

 

wait for any sign to grab my seat—no, I can’t pretend to notice a great deal

of things but these are definitely drops of blood on the concrete & that is a man throwing dozens of words right at me, ogling my damp shoes, calling himself Tiny

 

yes, Tiny says, you know you’re still making hullabaloo, hanging on good,

if your two feet keep strict to the ground   you know  you know  you know

you won’t ever, not in a million years! beat those threefifteeabeer/twentefrthehalf

 

I don’t disagree & he closes his eyes briefly, his huge shoulders slouched,

crouching inwards, hardly budging an inch except for when the bus

revs up & we all climb cautiously aboard oh & of course Tiny sees a friend

 

but won’t sit next to him, deciding instead to speak across ten empty rows, explaining his night before in one long tumble of words, humming sluggishly between sentences with a hooked grin strung from ear to ear; a gawmoge

 

so entranced by his own speech that the stories take on an almost mythic glint,

I mean, he imagines they do, re-enacting each misadventure as if they were happening again right here, now; half-shouting, shit-picky, tangential, stinking drunk—

 

his big bruised hands poking holes in the air, each sentence trailing off
to a slur, cracked flecks of skin on his knuckles and under his noise; raw

& recently scrubbed, red stains on his shirt and his upper lip, holes in his sleeve