COVINA

                I wrote about her quite often,
                in silence, on the top of a
                snow capped hill.
                She used to say to me,
                "Why are people on magazines
                always smiling? They suppose
                it's such a great honor to
                be on this magazine. When
                I am on magazines, I shall
                never smile."
                She said that sometimes.
                Perhaps it was in French.
                But I don't know because
                I don't know French.

                She was just a sleeping
                animal. Ocassionally she
                did speak too much, and
                did protest too little, as
                her own remiss.

                One day I found her in the
                gutter, not down, but up,
                strolling as with a
                lover in the commons. To
                tango music nonetheless.

                And thought, there she is
                a sleeping animal, now awaken
                skipping on railroad tracks
                and the like. It was then
                that I began to write
                about her, when she was
                no longer sleeping.

                Then what I wrote
                was given to un hombre
                living on the edge of the
                northwest. He said, "This
                is lost in all form,"
                Un hombre was in the
                old school, a traditional
                thinker. "It is not art,
                it is not worthy of professor
                giraffe."

                Meanwhile she asked me which
                ones. Which one? I said, "All
                of them."

Copyright © Kim Kielhofner, 2000.  All Rights Reserved.