My Clothes Donated to the Shadow of the Stratosphere
By Andrew Romanelli
This piece is a love letter to my city, to the unacknowledged of our city, a love letter to those that have moved on, those that are still here. It is a poor attempt at a love letter to myself because it was always a love letter to you.
My Clothes Donated to the Shadow of the Stratosphere
I.
I wake as an unearthed poker chip, neon palm trees on black, and I roll myself out onto my beloved Charleston Boulevard. Oh Charleston, how your big boxes stayed empty for months, your busses bare; corner store markets low on beer and all out of potato chips. Your bars empty, your little gambling joints where my mother says, “First you give the soul, then you give the wallet.” Closed. The people fled to your edge and spilled into Red Rock where non-hikers got loaded and took pictures atop any big boulder they found and went nowhere, while the first-time hikers got lost into rattlesnake season, anything was a path that granted them an anywhere. Charleston you took on your new runners, new cyclists. The air was clear over the strip. People fell in love on Turtle Peak, fell in love outside 7-11s, and there was real beauty in the unkept.
II.
No one believes in prophets anymore.
The abandoned men and women, numerous of which I know of Circle Park, those that shuffle Fremont, wander the Historic Westside, and others scattered into Centennial Hills and Henderson, seek a great new land within a decency. These kickers of cans, teachers of the new generations on how to grab at the cool of the sidewalk at night when you sleep; all of them have become quiet of words. In the beginning of this, when we had resigned ourselves indoors, they experienced a joy of free real estate, and an abundance of food being donated from casinos, schools, and restaurants. Sure, there was almost no one to panhandle, cans went unlittered but there was no hassling, the grind eased up. No cops to kick you, tell you pack up and move, or throw out all you own.
But it is like watching a poker machine for days, you’ll see how much others will give up, give in, pour into it and eventually you’ll see someone win a chunk.
The process takes away any excitement, any sense of progress.
We have lost so much; we continue to lose.
Our streets see more new faces than ever before,
there are thousands we will not see again in this existence.
We are a city that knows everything about loss.
Our sweat, blood, and body tower the winner.
We are survivors of many ages of the jinx.
We are out of work coolers paid under the table
so, there is no unemployment.
No one believes in prophets anymore.
I first heard them as a boy on my way to school when they laid behind newly constructed shelter bus stops letting their wine, their Mad Dog cool in the shade. I couldn’t make sense of it then, but I listened to what they could see of the horizon, the inevitable divide.
A schism born in every home,
both fear and jubilation sit across from each other at the table.
I walk into your living rooms now, and it is a war zone. You have even moved it into your bedrooms. People ask me which side am I on before they let me in and I say, “Yours friend, yours.” and it gets me a glass of tepid water and maybe a meal that was half paid attention to.
I am not complaining. I am just worried about you.
Nobody believes in prophets anymore.
They were never elected, they were among us, always.
They pulled us back to the sidewalk as we absently stepped towards oncoming traffic.
They smiled at us as we sweated in dress clothes on our way to a needed interview.
They gave us what they had because it was the right thing to do even if that was all they had.
They arrived in a moment and saw it through with us.
They spoke and we hardly even thought up a thank you.
They were connected.
You lose things to understand their value.
The old ways are gone, have been gone.
We just like to cling to them after the fact.
We have to get new together.
Nobody believes in prophets anymore.
Narrative, context, manipulation.
Let’s get back to us.
Not us against them,
the all of us.
For every inflated forearm from the bootstrap plan,
lays the masses immobile, inadequate of today’s demands.
We do not need heroes.
We need each other.
III.
How long have we been together?
I go back to PEPCON where my school’s windows were blown out.
Casino implosions put the freckles on my face.
I go back to the ’92 Riots, 8th Street marching, cars on fire belly up on MLK & Lake Mead.
Nucleus plaza, when rage boiled over and burned its surroundings.
I am with you in Gerson Park among Kingsman in a dice game.
With you on Donna Street where a khakied OG tells stories of the GQs.
I am on the court with you at the Doolittle Center.
I act grown with you outside the Seven Seas.
We walked Fremont before the boards went up, before the canopy,
before the outside money came in with all its promises.
We paint our past scars in bright colors too.
We are glitter gulch.
We are together, listening to 88.1 at Montevista.
We are sharing stories in a cell at Zenoff Hall.
I am working off probation hours with you at Golden Gloves.
Lounging next to you at a pool we snuck into, 98.5 is playing.
We are channel 3, channel 8, channel 13.
I go back to the 100-year storm in ’99.
I pushed a cart on the graveyard shift at the Showboat, busboy local 226.
I go back to the fall of the F Street wall.
I am drinking with you among the old belly-up businessmen,
from our mother/father era who watch the soft crackling foam of a $3 draft,
rolled over by our recession, our recession, our recission.
I am asleep, slumped next to you in a Blueberry Hill where you have paid my tab.
I am outside county, exchanging hand signals through your little window.
I am with you, holed up at Bastille when the bullets rained from Mandalay.
I am with you.
You.
You.
I am not written on a smoothie, a coffee cup.
I am not a slogan after a tragedy on a bumper sticker.
I am not a business monetizing grief.
I am with you.
You.
You.
With you as the numbers turn against us.
We are transformed in the morning light,
released after a night of protest.
My city you have me!
I have moved to your heart,
to be nearer to your pulse.
I will sleep to your wailing sirens!
Your mad guttural roars!
For the first time in my life you will receive me alone.
IV.
My transformation back-back into the word was a silly affair.
One that stepped off as I received the last rejection letter from an MFA program.
I dreamt I would leave you and return preferential.
Silly right?
But I had to know, I had to try.
And in the effort, sagebrush began to grow along my path
and Mountain Bluebirds in flight sang
a loud emphatic chirruping song to me at dawn.
It became clear to me then
that I was not destined to move away from you but closer to you.
All my life I have lived in the company of others.
To reach you I must arrive alone, stripped.
My city has covered its mouth.
From the towers they have decreed profits over people.
A man’s avocado spread is rolling down the aisle
of the 206-bus running a Saturday schedule on a Tuesday.
We are not dimmed.
I become another thing.
Disfigured from the sentence.
There is not enough catholic morphine
to register this hangover.
My transformation is a workup
to a surrendering of doubt.
I promise you will find me here
in these pages where I have curled and wept.
Receive me.
I shepherd your valley.
I collect your coiled ash.
I cannot stop the disappointment in myself
but I can stop running from you.
Say you won’t have me.
You are already mine.
Photo/Andrew Romanelli.
Andrew Romanelli is a slot machine in a supermarket. A Holy Joe of neologism, a frog-legged runner, full-time flâneur of Las Vegas. His poems have been published next to buffet coupons and in bar menus.
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