Downloadable PDF: Chapter 10
A bull’s breathed-bellow blazes incandescent as his green-eyes dim. I stand and walk on past him, the bottle kept within my grip; within my grasp.
Such sudden change; a moment of momentum.
Though I pace away afraid to slow averse to calm near all of me is weighted back and wrenched down – the Moon, free of the Earth, trying to escape the Sun – des’prate if not frantic to move onward ‘til it’s safe to linger I weave between pickpockets and pickpocketee – causing cover and confusion and success – into and outof a muddy-sewage stench that wafts in waves with irregularity as petty smugglers and thieves with their glassware and their sugar and their rum that which they’ve stolen from the hogsheads envelope me and de-envelope on their stampede across the street now where, falling into me, near onto me, a man who reeks of all accumulation rips the bottle out, with ease, from my weak hand, puts his other – black – against my chest and forms a fist around my jacket, pulls me in and slurs: “Noche oscura de la mente!”
william altoft 