The Bower of Bliss
- Nov 21, 2023
- 1 min read
by Tim Duffy
In the parking lot, the men walk bow-legged, like cowboys after the last cattle-thief has been shot. In the town, the mines have
already collapsed and they drive from shuttered windows to orange signs, a cigar in the mouth casting shadows on the too-bright shirt,
the sidewalk, the worn jeans stretched with a faint pile of cash. When we approach, we were told it was our destiny to destroy
the last great citadel of desire. Secretly, we hoped to be turned traitors to temperance and so entered with money, hats, low voices
amid the cries. This is a training ground where bodies learn to move in new ways. We are still. Next to us a pile of money rubs against
round flesh. When you were a boy they told you never to come here and so now it is all you have dreamed of. The fountain of desire,
the women topless in the flow of water. When we walk among our people, look at them face to face and let
your garments fall loose. When we walked under the gates to this place it warned us that intemperance would destroy us completely.
But one bowl pours so easily into another. The fountains taught me that. So we connect, one garden to the other, like lost flies to a neon sign saying OPEN
Tim Duffy is a poet and teacher living in Connecticut. His work has recently appeared in Southern Florida Poetry Journal, Salt Hill, Sepia, Pleiades, and elsewhere. He is at work on a collection entitled The Rabbit in the Archive.
