Steve Trebellas
XXThe Hiss Quarterly || Volume IV, Issue 3
ISSN 1556-245X
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Someone saw you the other day, you who were once pretty—a natural con, and stealer of virginity, now, with the walking dead and doubled over. If I wanted, I could find you. I'd walk through that dry ocean of stucco, dog fights, chorizo in the air like an omen. I'd find you where stick-men hide in the open, but I’m no agency. I have no room for you. I think a grave may be your best friend now that you are old, and Larimer—that seldom cushioned street, becomes a shining crystal in the sun. The automated sweepers know your name. They will surely run you down. It comes back: Sun rising, bums asleep, or spinning beneath mounds of trash, or dead in a doorway. Once, we dragged one to a party. It was All Saint's night—sky in raw sienna, streaked with beacon light. High above a loading ramp—a place where we could see but not be seen. You told me how you'd weaseled for the older thieves, who sent you up a water-spout to force a window, trick a lock, double back to let the low-lifes in. You pointed to a to a four-inch granite seam, a "cakewalk" to a window by a ledge, zipped your coat and simply flew. Wet-dog alley-smell, sick blue haze of diesel smoke, ragged mountain silhouette. It comes back—how I slipped beneath the soffet where the ledge was black-ice slick, caught a wire hank and spun, waking all the pigeons—bursting upward, gray/white crosses. Jackdaws on the parapet hopped sideways—barked like politicians. You just spun your heels, said "shhhh," and motioned for the tools as an early-morning rocket clawed for altitude, masking sounds of split wood as you snapped the lock, dragged the window up. Your victory smile said we were rich, and all our bad notes laid to rest. That was then, before the pride of Denver swept you and the slum away— before I got a cleaner cage. The one who saw you the other day—the one who said you were wasted and flanked by evil, also recalled your addicting personality—how sensitive to betrayal you could be. This mystified us, who, possessing none of your agility, envied your bravado, calculated clowning, and high-street style. I think how rescue would be, for you, a tactile thing, were I to pull you from the fast-receding Barrio, but I’m no Agency—or St. Bernard to pull you from the killing jar, besides, you would never rescue me, or even recall the exceptional haul that day: Vintage clothing, framed etchings from some golden age, over 300 steel pennies from the war. I spent, and or wasted a half-day parked in front of that same building. It was unbelievably improved, lit up, and busy from within, but filled, earlier, with windowed images of you, forever locked in youth, waving but fading as day wore thin and surried into night. All of it gone, utterly. The low rent and cheap store-fronts—the Raza and Anglo artists. Miles of tenements and warehouses fell to renovator's cranes or were transformed into expensive lofts. In the space of a season, Denver of the Western expansion was gone. Also, two dollar haircuts, taco joints and pawn shops of Larimer and Market Streets, carnival Day of the Dead, Cinco de Maya festival, the bright primary colors. The mission church with the staccato neon cross floated straight up, the bums grew wings and flew to Okalahoma whence they came. The white punks got the message: If you're going to be that way, get you to L.A. or Chicago. This is not to say they won't be back. Denver has always been rife with riff raff, and that's because of location—which as any real estate person will tell you is Key. © Steve Trebellas
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