nightmares

Raggedy bands of skaters launching coordinated rebellions, some led by women, while families huddle in their splintered, roofless wooden hovels, listening to salvaged radios and special-issue CDs from indie pseudo-political labels. A Yale graduation lost in labyrinths of vendors selling worthless "art" for such high prices that all a robed graduate can do is deface them drunkenly while others shell out for paper cutouts of Branford. An aerial journey from pier and river mouth following liquid and concrete veins of civilization into an anticlimactic suburban California downtown whitewashed by dead sunshine. A scatological-mechanical gift. And in the penthouse of a hospital, a stalagmite- and stalactite-filled crypt for cosmetic treatment in which disaster, perhaps due to terrorist intervention, befalls a client as I watch horrified, less than a fly on the wall.

Why do you haunt me, nightmares? The hospital narcotics are long gone, the flashbacks have faded to oblivion, the stitch scars have ossified, the wounds are healing. The phone has never beeped at night. Leave me to the labyrinths of my conscious conscience... take pity and leave me alone.

[Sign in the deserted neighborhood and amusement park at Pleasure Beach, a stone's throw from the industrial shell of Bridgeport, by T. Ng]