Emily Beyer

The Bike Mechanic

Before, may that I rest in Eden again, please let me
surface on the gray city’s jaw and catch a whiff
of sandalwood off the Soap Wrapper King and follow
as shy as a corn husk doll a laundry line’s distance

behind with a wimpled heart and watch him look
in the cars on Brooklyn Avenue for all the things
not worth taking, but only getting his image back,
a thin guard-dog glance with different sized eyes—

the left held wide by his working brow, the right
slumped on the bench of a weed conquered boat—
that bark him back to the straight line, his nose
saturating in the scent of a flimsy wish gnawed off.

He, the truer of wheels, cleaner of parts, staggers a little
under the chase of the clock on this Monday off,
scrubbed his hands in the morning and the chains’ grease
wouldn’t come out from the cracks, his nails black,

slip into his pockets. Safeco building’s stout
as a baker ahead, Cedar’s Indian Kitchen perfuming
the street, a haytruck clears its throat,
ogres by, and he doesn’t believe he is lucky.