As If I Knew

As If I knew
By Max Winter

It was a good year, he says at the top of the new hotel, in the room always lit, in the room in which a television always plays ‘The Dahlia,’ in which a flower is the voice of a death, what voice it can muster in the crackly noplace;

it was a good year, he says, lying on his bed, hands outstretched, in one hand the model of a small city — where we may find an apothecary ever to grind in a pestle, an architect to build Valhalla, an optometrist to let us Through — and in the other the wrapper from a box of cigars given to a box of friends;

it was a good year, if you take out the bad, he says, as the snow picks up, as predicted from blue fields on the edges of weather; and the guest can see less, but he looks less as one meeting begets another meeting, as more water is drunk, as a series of figures keeps him from his train;

in which the living room is empty till the murderer enters, the sound is running behind, mouths move, the ending will not satisfy;

if you take out the bad, you are left with the following figures, he says;

where we pray beneath the bells, where we play some old records when the houses are empty;

if you take out the bad, having loosened his tie, having dropped his shoes, having picked up the phone;

it was a good year, he says from the top of the new hotel, to his absent, to the Wood of Suicides, to the Bellhop;

in which a flower is a piece of candy, in which a face is a piece of contrast; the film may stop as an object may stop, mid-sentence;

if you take out the bad parts, sure it was fine, maybe with changes; the glass he has held will fall on the ground;

in which brambles grow at the scene of the crime, in which everyone knows, all the time;

goodness gracious, the killer done struck again