Issue 22 - 1992

Coe Review • Issue 22
brushing through the cold and restless crowds, as horns sound and
airbrakes wheeze, sirens wail, all her people sigh, they seek bread,
the last whimpering echo of a plainsong guttering like a candle in the
morning traffic.
His hat jammed down upon his ears and scowling brows, his
overcoat lapels turned up to the hatbrim, scarf around his chin, he is
all but buried in his winter habit. Only his eyes stare forth, aglitter
with vexation and the resolution to press on, and below them, his
nose, pinched and flared with indignation, his pink cheeks puffed
out, blowing frosty clouds of breath through chattering teeth. His
mouth, under his moustache, is drawn into a rigid pucker around his
two front teeth, my god, it is cold, what am I doing out here? His
hands are stuffed deep in his overcoat pockets, and poking forth
from his thick herringbone wraps like a testy one-eyed malcontent:
his penis, ramrod stiff in the morning wind, glistening with ice
crystals, livid at the tip, batting aggressively against the sullen
crowds, this swirling mass of dark bodies too cold for identities,
struggling through the snow, their senses harrowed, intent solely on
keeping their brains from freezing.
Oh, my poor doomed ass, I’m in real trouble, he whimpers to
himself as he trundles along, tears running down his cheeks, teeth
clattering, frozen snot in his moustache, up against it, expletives the
only thing that can keep him warm, that he can pretend will keep him
warm, shouldering his way through a thickening stupefaction,
sidestepping the suicides, those are the lucky ones, man, not you,
who gives a shit, all running down anyway, why do you have to play
the fucking hero?
He walks through winter like that, wheezing and whistling,
feeling sorry for himself, aching with cold, sick of keeping it up
anymore, but scared to die, picking them up, putting them down, hup
two three, attaboy, yes, there he goes, a living legend, who knows,
maybe the last of his kind, seen through a whirl of blowing snow,
through a scrim of messages, an unfocused word-filter, lamenting
the world’s glacial entropy and the snow down his neck, bobbing
along in this cold sea of pathetic mourners, this isocephalic
compaction of misery and affliction, the dying city and he in it,
whimpering: piss on it! yet refusing to quit, refusing to tip over and
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