Recent Scenes from Empire
A young man wearing pajama bottoms and mismatched slippers roamed the neighborhood picking up dog shit. It was noon and raining.
My local OTA joint asked if I might be interested in helping publish the poems a beloved dead regular who spent several decades writing eulogies for all the dead patrons. I said sure: trade for beer. Apparently the man brewed his coffee in the morning with Natural Ice beer instead of water.
A man stood in the garage of a dilapidated house that I thought had been abandoned. He was obese, red haired, wearing shower booties, scratching his balls with one hand and playing with his phone with the other.
A pierced and tattooed man and his two dogs romped at the bay beach. We met. Elmer played with the dogs and he said he’d just moved here from Coos Bay. Someone had beat the shit out of him while his dogs watched. He had to get out of the Willamette Valley. He really wanted to emigrate to Norway. He was trans and felt unsafe in America.
A woman with collage-bloated lips at the boat ramp spoke to the sky in weird guttural voices. I couldn’t make out the gist of the conversation.
An OTA woman at the bar said she felt bad about beating up her elderly male neighbor. He tried to secretly throw away some shit in her dumpster and she caught him red handed. No, it didn’t matter that he had dementia.
Three miscreants rode ATVs through the neighborhood.
A 400-pound man wearing shorts, a sweat soaked mu-mu like t-shirt, work boots (no socks or shoestrings) entered the local market and bought a package of mini frosted chocolate donuts.
A group of elementary students clammed at low tide.
I built my first Coos Bay driftwood fort. It might last all summer. I keep adding to it.
Two homeless men held a profane conversation inside their fort hacked out of a thicket of blackberries. It had something to do with fellatio.
A tiny and gnarled old woman vacuums a massive red carpet with her right hand while using a cane with her left. The carpet was unrolled on a front yard of a house decorated with dozens of lawn gnomes.
A young woman sleeps in her old sedan and Elmer and I walk by her every morning. She has stuffed animals with her and a tiny brown dog curled up next to her.
People with physical compositions that I’ve never witnessed in my life go about their daily lives.
A homeless man living out of his pickup with his girlfriend walks his four dogs on the crabbing pier.
A female bartender says she gave up shots after drinking a half gallon of Early Times whiskey and woke up with a knife slash over her eye.
A homeless woman takes a quasi shower at the fish cleaning station at the boat ramp.
A homeless woman digs in the mud at the bay beach.