Gypsy

Lurithen R. Fraser


There is a 48 by 48 inch shotgun house floating in the Long Island Sound
That is her understanding when he talks about where he is living
A one-bedroom shack his mother's last residence 
in which she let mice nest in the oven.
It's a square house consuming minute acreage on City Island
His mismatched cardboard vessels opened and closed barracking 
a pathway to anywhere.
The gypsy is in him as it is in her secure infrastructures of time 
and negate distinguishing spaces of roof and wall.
He sleeps in a chair and she slept on a hundred dollar air mattress
for a year until it deflated from the weight of lovers and use.
She sleeps on a black slacker a two feet step up from the floor.
From behind skin scratches the gypsy—those of past non regrets
and joy felt an anxiousness why drink coffee they asked her
when you my dear is about to take flight in seconds of a minute
that not even god could count.
Sitting at side table in a commercial coffee shop off of Canal Street
An intermission in their walk his speech lounging on tempo aged
as if in throat and mind haunted with tattered lyrics
of a folk ballad that has been through too many mouths.
She imaged him with a violin or maybe she wanted to see that movie
again where Samuel L. Jackson appears as an auction dealer.
He felt light like a gust of wind from a door with a bell swung open
and the store clerk looks up to receive Autumn's kiss and a closing entrance
from a person who changed their mind. 
It is the gypsy sighing underneath his stare—not sad eyes 
she can distinguish the daydream and is there with him
on a shoreline of black sand discussing American politics
with a band of pirates hungry from their daily thievery.
At night there is a bonfire, seafood and thick heavy red wine the last
meal before he wakes in the middle of his story
there were mice nesting in the oven.