“Tightrope City” was originally published by Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

“Tightrope City” is Carl’s third published poem and third entry in Ellery Queen where he has previously published two short stories. 

TIGHTROPE CITY: A DICK ULYSSES MYSTERY

Engine ticking as it cooled,
I was parked at an overlook I’d never seen,
taking in the yawing mass of human avarice
The city, full of emptiness and all the old fond paradoxes

Palm trees swayed, lunatic, and nodding pumpjacks
plunked out the city’s rhythm,
and in the east,
the red dancers of a far-flung wildfire
slashed a jagged chorus line down the dark horizon

air thick with downy ash
and the tempest moan of the unavenged

Was I delivered to this precipice by
some ill-starred storm of fortunes
or my own downright violence,
some deadly trap I set for myself,
full of all the long goodbyes I’d never said

And dreamy-eyed, I watched the city grid,
faint and twinkling through a sheet of drift smoke

I wanted to pull the covers up over my head,
ebbing to the dark and deep
but my car gave its old hubcaps a shake
and I had promises to break

I turned the key and spoke to no one but the city lights
Kill me tomorrow; let me work tonight

***

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