Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, as One-Act Ballet, and: Great Bear, China Girl, King Ivory, and: The Saint, and: News Cycle, and: Pyramus & Thisbe, and: The Illuminati David Moolten (bio) Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, as One-Act Ballet You rise from a horizontal pas de deux, lurch aroundwith her in the muscle car to the stereo's quake,the backdrop bowling, all-you-can-eat pancakes,and of course mining, steel, and Jesus,going but never gone like weed tipspoking through snow. Your faces turnto mist while you envy the distance, all mountains,finally the fine fentanyl powder of the stars,the two of you just another shift, a generationlined up to man this museum, this mausoleum.But at night you perform whatever actson her the personal ad argot promisedin front of a man if he seems harmless enough,high but restrained when you do it like balloonsleashed to a chair the morning after a partyon the factory floor. She lifts her dresslike a curtain on your good old days, a short historyof the place, a Thespian in magic shoeson a torn poster in the school's long hall.But he's lonely, and he's serious, showing youfive shell casings from Abu Al-Khaseeb. He's sobbingand eating swan tonight. The dancershave all squatted on the suddenly dimmed stage. [End Page 143] Great Bear, China Girl, King Ivory The morgue fills like the hold of a cargo shipsailing away every day from landlocked Bethlehem,a used-up coal cast on the snow, where once vatstilted to pour golden metal and famous mills made Americaby the unit and the ton, now just the numbers and namesof the lost. The people who sell to your brother,at least they found jobs, and the smugglers,the runners and lookouts. Isn't this that shot in the armthe past has waited for? Optimism flaresin his butane flame's cupped hand. The spoon bubbles,the map catches fire, Allentown, Scranton, Honesdale,delusion real to the disillusioned, telltale mistfrom his mouth like the silent ghostof a party horn in an empty house, otherwise familythe siding's forgotten string of carsby a limestone river's indigo vein. Oh, quaint chimneysin a fallow sky, tall shadows in the dusk,a cure for dust made of dust. [End Page 144] The Saint Dusk smoldered in the weedsbehind the factories while a saint hung by a threadfrom the rearview in the Chevy John gave Jenwhen he went away. She and Danny foughtand I waited in back with the beer.Our town never knew lovelike mine for my cousin, or his for his wife,or hers for her brother when he stoodmanacled to himself, or his for his high schoolex, or hers for her father who taught thereuntil he lay on their kitchen floor, fading, radiantlove the story of the town like an abbreviationfor everyone in it. Just like that, only thatdrove us, shared if whispered and alwayson our lips, what we clung tolike a man hadn't died but shatteredinto light with a thousand timesthe power in all those furnaces and machines.Whoever harnessed it might have put this placeon a map. Instead, the tediumwe missed returned and we knew it as solace,and tomorrow we'd tug on our boots and overallsas though sacrifice meant we didn't worship dyingwith every breath, no disagreementleft in us, just the nuts and bolts of a lieeveryone assumed, no need to tell itas the last of the long day crept up the hills. [End Page 145] News Cycle You go up in a three-alarm blaze or give black icea whirl while passing a semi, have a new nameas long as it takes to say it. They really are detailsat 11. But every death reminds me of yours.Once the only weather it was time to checkwas the zephyr of your breathminute by minute while you lay in the dark.Now a tree...
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Jun 5, 2024
Adrien Peyrache 
Open Access