from The Book of Skies

I have a job in a factory, near a defunct train station. The river is close by with cargo.

The factory is small, very dangerous. Rubber. In the back, a staircase, a cracked window. The women are dragging. They wear special gloves.

One woman has left, I learn. Some kind of trouble, it’s confused.

I eat outside, I prefer. Hard-boiled eggs and coffee. The sky is limp. I watch the little waves on the river, the sand, the cranes.

Tall, thin cranes, perpendicular. There is a man way up there seated in his cabin, I see him, leaning, behind his plastic window.

 

*

I wait for him at the Metro. It’s evening, the sky turns over. People talk to each other.

He’s wearing a jacket, his cigarette already lit. I watch him come up the steps. Violent movement. Something opens and remains lost. Bright sky, transparent.

We come to a little narrow square surrounded by streetlamps. On the corner there’s an interior design store, rolls of wallpaper, accessories. On the walls, the municipal posters.

It’s a moment in the evening, ambiguous and distinct, like a point. All around, people, their uncertainty.


 
*

He takes me to see his mother. She lives in the suburbs.

It’s a small house, with two stories. The walls are painted blue and pink. I’m seated, a guest.

The filled space of the house, pieced together, sewn. Everywhere, curtains. The radio is always on.

We sleep in the big bed, upstairs. It’s a family bed. The mother sleeps downstairs.

All around, the fields, the brown potatoes. Here and there some apartment buildings. I watch the children walking home. Others stay, on the balconies.



 
*

I go to work in a cable factory. It’s a trial period.
At the entrance, the guard. She has her dog.

The workshop is big, very simple.
Long flat wooden tables and the air that floats, turning.

I am with a young woman, obese and blonde, who always tells the truth. In the morning, I buy her coffee. We take turns.


 
*

At noon I take a walk by the canal. Trees, a bridge.
On the other side, a factory, brick.

Easy bricks, regular. It looks like a partition.

The building is old, a manufactory. It’s an old-fashioned scene, the trees, the canal.

I pass some girls standing by the door. They’re all wearing white smocks, they’re getting some air. Little pliers stick out of their pockets.

 

*

We often meet at the top of the street.
A jumbled intersection, wide.

In the distance, an unfinished building, a construction site.
The windows are like drawings, holes.

The street runs along a hospital, a historic name. A rigid smokestack from the depths of the building.

Women pass by, very beautiful, with their jackets on their shoulders. I see their astonished faces, their gold necklaces.

Fractured world, ruins within. Wooden gates.
And behind, production.

 

*

The little house, the room. I go inside.
Everyone is there. Walls and chairs, curtains.
It’s compact, solid.

I eat. Nouns and verbs can circulate.
Everyone is there, face against face.

The food is very good, very heavy.
Animal bodies, swallowed, with vegetables.
Custards too, made with milk.
Everybody eats.

The walls are far, far. The radio is silent.
Still, we’re enveloped. I smell the wallpaper.

No invisible wires, as in a stage set.
There are the eyes, and the hatred, without object, tolerant.