A woman with thick wrists beats a threadbare carpet in a narrow alleyway. Centuries rise into the air, the world in veiled relief, yet I am slightly out of focus here as I examine my life at arm’s length the way I used to examine the cut of a Brioni suit tailored to a T at Anselmo’s House of Fine Fabrics. So many tasks I seek to avoid as afternoon sinks into the shapeless lap of twilight with a few shards of fire stuck in the sky to backlight the Nike logo atop the city’s lone relay tower. So far from Slender Falls, West Virginia, & all I do is sit out on the terrace, dry vines cracking around me as I study the box scores of baseball games back home. I know I am capable of false regard as I contemplate the majesty of a domed stadium where cheers merge above a retractable roof. Honeymooners in luxury skyboxes lose their inhibitions & make love with the blinds open so they won’t miss the runner rounding third. Yes, I still covet the serrated edges of the emerging world where hot money flows like lava down the bare backs but not into the wallets of the workers. I help traders wrest control of local commodities—cocoa, copper, magnesium—the exhilaration of leverage before widespread panic roils all controls, & the local militia loots the clearing houses. Every night the same dream: I am stranded on the top floor of the latest tower, plastic tarp impaled on re-bars, one corner always loose—rippling—a steady waveslap—an empty wheelbarrow turned upside down; vertigo compelling me to freefall; below me the smeared glow of traffic lights endlessly blinking red, yellow, green. I awake hearing my mother’s voice—we shall be driven from the light into darkness & chased out of this world. In the dream I plead my case: I am just the middleman!

James Himelsbach is an actor and poet. As an actor he won an OBIE award for his performance in Talk at the Public Theater in New York City. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Witness, Blackbird, Crab Orchard Review, Notre Dame Review, Allegro, Birmingham Review, Slipstream. His poem, “A Careful Man,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.