Emperor Anonymous
by Derek Hugen, 7-8-04, revised 7-27-04
The buildings are empty of people. They are full of those
towering empty spaces between blonde-knuckled concrete,
and that old drunk in the jail cell retells tall tales like
the one how he built this place by hand, brick by brick,
harboring a pickaxe and some glue. Twenty years ago,
he could have walked right out of that cell, stepped his
mud-ridden working boots from behind the bars, straight out onto
a field of wildflowers where little boys with
dirty, white-smiled faces made their forts, throwing
rocks and gravel chunks at little girls. Time soon
kicked up. It rolled across Main Street like a tank, crushing
barbershops and Woolworth's under its barbarous belly,
fat with the blood of farmers. But the old drunk survived.
He built up high walls and lived out long lives. He became a
patriot and the local dentist, he made ship-in-a-bottles and played
dominoes in the park until his fingers cracked at the joints.
Eventually, life stopped. It ground out to a quick halt. Left
him there quoting Wallace Stevens poems out loud
into the recess of a prison cage, drunk and out of his mind.
The young guard grins at the old man, nodding his
head reassuringly while harboring an annoyance
At waiting for this old man to sober up
again. The drunk is backlit in the cell by the sun, becomes
black shadows with strips of white around his edge, completely
defining his haggard shape. Like that he is defined. A
drunk, teller-of-tales, village idiot, old man. Roller of big
cigars. Emperor. Anonymous and old. |
