Issue 7, Winter/Spring 2009

You Follow the Red, by Patrick Carrington

to alleys on Fremont, where whores
are busy with mouths and needles,
touching tongues and thumbs
to the center of their sorrow. To felt

rooms at the Mint where pros are kids
from Yale raised on bridge, winking
like one-eyed jacks through nicotine
and nightmares. To the sad parquet

of a penthouse, where night demands
you square a private chaos, tempts
you with a champagne glass and
tangles of hair. You are lost

in lingers, in the light of small hours,
low days, in the scars that remain
past scabs and gutters. This city’s
cold steel has taken flesh, 

takes you by the hand to watch
the fresh carving of a darkness
that knows. To feel the blade again,
raised high from the roof

of dawning day, penetrate
in a surge of blue.