there's a man standing on the corner of Rue de la Marine
he's a single strand of wheat
the spike reaching average height
in a wheat field at the far corner of civilization.
he's more-than-waiting
to laugh now at a joke of the future.
he dreams of day dreaming again—
if, by chance, a dream might trip over his foot
which edges into the middle of the stone sidewalk.
he speaks to the aloof donkey next to him,
"don't eat old hay without saying thanks
and make sure to dip your head to nobility,
for some, you know, being a donkey is an upgrade."
a tourist skips by, baked red and drunk,
and ready to be served on an overpriced plate
of spaghetti on the corniche.
the man coughs, surprised by the force
and afraid. there's blood on his hand.
the doctors haven't figured it out yet
they suspect something in the lungs
but he knows it already—
his disease is sinking hope.
he's sunk by it.
his hope is an anchor ever dropping and never landing.
he turns to the donkey
stumbling as he tries to straighten his back—
"have you ever seen a smile so real that you felt like crying?
or heard a song so royal that you moaned?
you know, friend, autonomy is a sea shell
hollowed out by sand and the waves of reality
and now pocketed by a pimpled young boy
who picks up the beach towel
simply because his father told him to do so."
the donkey turns to eat more trash
unmoved by the stalk of some unknown grain speaking to him
from the corner of Rue de la Marine
somewhere between the medina
and the stars, the man had choked on the city lights.
his family thinks him ill, strangled and oxygen deprived
by his own incessant insistence that
modernity is a garrote on the neck of his people.
"my people" he groans to the donkey
"are the crown of the Sahara.
here the sun sets from its toil."
the wheat whips in the wind
nearly breaking by the pressure to perform.
"wasn't there a time when men laughed without shame?
when mercy crowned the old?"
he wishes he could silence the ache of his soul
on the promise of medicine, infrastructure, and leisure.
but it still cries out: vanity.
on the corner of Rue de la Marine.
white paint scabs the wall he leans on.
the space between the wall and his building door
is a memoir of hope lost.
the man once stumbled upon the stars
in the love of "bright eyes," he used to called her,
until the her eyes dimmed and finally shut.
her fire doused by something called "unknown cause."
he still mourns as a fisherman who, after casting all night,
returns home hungry and ashamed
silenced by his inevitable subjection to vulgar coincidence.
he stares into the air, finding relief in the silence
between the honks and skids of the passing cars
on the corner of Rue de la Marine.
his anchor drops still,
a hadji walks by and coughs furiously
and fate unveiled itself.
"on what ground do we say 'i hope so'?"
he grunts to the donkey—not caring that
he is ignored, along with the whine of the seagull above.
"so what if i haven’t given in?
we cheer the underdog, getting up again and again,
so what if i can't win. i'll die resisting."
he unsheathes a cigarette out of his shirt pocket
like a bloodied sword that has cut off
many enemies despite its rust.
"an old blade can down a young giant."
he coughs again.
he couldn't block his mouth in time
to keep the blood from painting the scabbed wall
with a new memory. in rage he tries
to scratch away the blood with his nails, but
he sees fate in the wall, as if he had just been judged, and moaned,
"but i am a broken blade."
he turns to go home
from the the corner of Rue de la Marine
there’s a scream from down the street
someone angry that the power went off
during the big game on television.
he collapses into his bed,
a cheap wooden frame upholding
a priceless mixture of sweat, sheets, and memories.
the bed is suspended between the mosque and the fish market
on floor number 3.
he often knew his friend there. she'd look at him
and break his darkness in that bed.
"what’s not a scheme?" he asks himself in an ignoble tone.
he wishes the donkey was beside him again.
"wisdom, I insist, is forged by time, not technology."
now the man weeps in the heat.
"the heat is a winnowing fork," he repeats
as a proverb his mother taught him as a young boy.
he turns on a fan in hope
that the tears are chaff that will blow away
out the window and over the sea,
but instead they soak the sheets.
he forgets to take his pills,
as he drops into sleep, whispering something
about modernity and something about her.
under his window a man walks home
and, out of boredom, kicks the donkey
on the corner of Rue de la Marine.
— Joey Shaw
