The Trace (old, 2002)

As soon as I heard the Yugoslav police

had stormed Slobodan’s suburban villa

that Mirijana and daughter were with him

(a bullet-proof limousine in a side-entrance)

I thought of Mirjana’s Antigone fixation

then about Maximilian and Carlotta in Mexico

and their besiegement, how they must’ve

also heard the world crash on their heads

in columns of fire or armed police escorts,

and then the question of its sound occurred

then those two attorneys with killer mastiffs

maiming the lesbian soccer coach in a foyer

caught in Mendocino with a bundle of cash

and from all evidence in flight from the law,

shooting through Sonoma County’s valley

past wineries in the pastel guise of Tuscan villas

(behind them bine-stems stitching the fields up)

until they fly through Mendocino’s piny altitudes

to lose the trace, until the next news dispatch

reveals them slightly dowdy sans habitual tweed

while the day-glo orange of their prison tunics

recalls the days of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

and his flock, stray children of industrialists

casually poisoning Chinese buffets in food courts

when not shuttling between Oregon and Nepal –

but their complexion is an embarrassing fire

highlighting their corpulence, their gin blossoms,

or the blight of rosaceae or acne vulgaris

to confirm the physical expression of depravity.

But surely in separate cells they relive the spark

of attraction felt in law school or the pro bono circuit

before they go through hell for one another--

and perhaps a ruby blush has never left their faces.