The Artist

An artist arrives in a

secondhand sweater, cable knit, holy

jeans with a cross adjacent

to a crescent, pentagram, and om

tattooed across his hands

stained with paints and ink

with pencil shavings for fingernails.

Finishing his absinthe in glass,

the jug echoes the melody of the one song he remembers

his grandfather sang him, the one song he remembers

from his family in Missouri,

before he surrendered to a broken heart.

Playing on the steps avant de bilbiotheque

(for he frequents the French Quarter), his dark eyes

act as the shutter on an antiquarian camera,

(which he hopes belonged to Méliès)

memorize the cracks in the sidewalk

(he wonders how they feel).

But he is unnoticed, too involved

in his own world that he desperately

wants to share, but everyone else

is busy counting shirts.