Sunspots on a Calendar Week
by Anthony Martin

I’D LIKE to tell the sun, the persistent, pervasive sun, to get bent. I’d crease it centerwise myself, fold it once, twice for good measure, and slip it into that one-finger pocket they sewed into my jeans, but I’ve a hunch it won’t comply. It deadens the air this time of year, sitting above the lakefront like a waterproof flare suspended in a saline sea.
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It sits there like a big old
counterfeit of The Hunchback.
The drops of sweat of my temple
creeping uselessly - wait! - I could come over
and water your garden.
The air is thick like smoker's breath,
or maybe how one comes out of a steamed bath.
The fan's head swirls back and forth -
it looks like a giant and plastic flower.
It blows only some, directed relief.
Most of the old school thermometer is red.
The numbers are pushing eighty.
Finally the arrival of the repairman.

The devil is beating his wife
(in the parlance of my mother)
meaning rain and sun together, a cold knife
trimming clouds from one another.
What’s a city? A million lives, with no life
of its own; these poems are artifice. Why bother?

Because he wants to know big Houston’s charms,
the arms that hold it: Beltway 8 and Loop 610.
Or maybe he would cheat a one specific harm,
fake out the cookie monsters, pretend
he lives for karma or he’s charming.
The rain’s stopped. He boils water, zips the tent.

The fear of the end
Of God
Is the beginning of
All fears

The fear of forgetting
The fear of falling
The fear of fighting

The beginning is always
The end
With all ends
All beginnings
All ends

The beginning of God
Is the end of God
As with fear
Ends all things