Michael McClintock

Raspados

The hour when the horned dog sleeps, that hour, and the moon a smear over the freeway, the electric plant, the brewery, the blocks of warehouses, suspended pale and humid, that moon at the end of the long avenue of trees and small homes and apartments, and the evening air a moist breath of voices, those voices at the end of all the long avenues, our voices, tired in the dark, the languid hour after dinner, tired from the world’s canning, the world’s stitching machines, the lathes and hot lights and liquid metals, the smell of grease and ozone, cement and tar, deaf from the buzzing saws, deaf from the hammering presses, deaf from drills endlessly drilling, ceaselessly laboring for that foot in the ass—

muggy night . . .
the child’s moon drawing
taped to the fridge

There is an old man from Calexico, a man mute and blind in one eye, who comes along pushing a small cart carrying rainbows of color on shaved ice, syrups of orange and yellow and green, cool fantasies in sugar for a dollar.

We listen for him, his sound a tinkling of tin bells coming out of the purple splash of day-end dreams and tree-shadow—our eyes finding him in the early evening darkness, the only man in the world good for the eyes at that hour—that man selling syrups on sparkled ice, bringing his sweet, cooling, tasty raspados.

suddenly awake—
the dog’s chain
dragging in the dark