Dust Angels

Dear Angel of Dust;

I always wanted to write that. Nathaniel Mackey wrote that. He wrote it in Bedouin Hornbook and maybe the rest of the trilogy. I should have brought a copy to the ducks today. I could have sung it.

Like roadside dust to settle myself I settled to watch the ducks today. Again. Then pedalled in darkness, glad for the rocks and gravel vibrating chill thru my shoulders from the tines, glad for darkness.

What if Mackey didn't want religion, just a book? What if he never wanted to write a book, but no one had written it or someone left it somewhere, let the leaves scatter and damp in algae and birdcrap.

The leaves I stole from the office I left on the spokes of the bike, dry, pinned by the keys.


Thank you for coming to a second post when I wrote you nothing in the first.

I must have known something when I felt guilty to take this job. I'd walked into the Voltage office, the temp place, and told them I needed a paycheck. I felt I implied that I would do most anything, and the agent smiled behind her Moneypenney dark frames as though that anything sounded just correct.

"This writing," she mentioned, and casually, "Does it ever take, well, a journalistic air? I mean, ah, pieces for newspapers, or --"

"Oh, no no, just poetry," I played a hunch, played a false modesty as though to hide false pride, "a thing about how words fit together." She smiled. I suppose I fit some part. From the stubble on my face when I'd gotten off the plane I had carved some affectation of a goatee, and as I spoke to her I had crossed my legs comfortably in a way that should feel faggy this side of the Atlantic.

"No, that's OK. That's fine," she said. "It's just. We've sent people before. They're funny over there."

I'll get to funny, but my father's keys are at the door, and he doesn't need to know.

And there isn't time. Was there? I've mislaid it. Dear Angel of Dust these four thousand years whoever ever else?