There's another form.
It's very difficult to describe.
It's a kind of narrative that I hope explains itself just
as a short story would, I hope.
It's called "Getting Out of Jail on Monday."
"I'm going into the building.
He's coming out.
It's city property where official cement pours sideways
up and down out of the windows.
I'm paying fine for driving and walking crooked,
and he's getting out of jail on a fine morning,
singing and waving, just walking away.
As if he'd sung my name, I turn and follow
this husky bow-legged upright, sockless
Indian, who's singing, going downhill straight as an arrow.
He's chanting deep in his throat.
His mouth hangs open like that tavern doorway.
Stomping, he sings against it as harsh and sharp as the wind
through underbrush.
The sun is sunny side up.
Swatches of sky are glancing down from the windows
around us.
The gutter's a foot away.
The secretaries are sharpening the corners of their eyes.
The boards are busy upstairs.
Good signatures are flourishing at the business
ends of letters.
And the Indian goes inside like a parade.
Me too.
I buy him a beer.
He sings around it, staring at me with flat, obsidian eyes,
then drinks it aloud.
The sun is over easy.
I buy another.
We down it against the clock, which is prying the hour apart
with its bare hands.
All over town, the time-vaults are yawning open.
They disengage their polished, case-hardened teeth
from the dark strikes that bolted them all home.
The money is rolling out into the morning
after a breathless weekend in the tank.
The jukebox crackles and burns in the corner.
I give him my necktie.
He threads it like a belt and hikes his pants,
cinching himself tight.
We try to imagine not being arrested
till the end of the week.
I tell him about work, and we drink to cinches tighter
than our luck.
Outside, the sun is a raw egg and a beer,
and the cars and cabs are jerking around noon.
From this enormous distance, you have
to shout to make yourself heard.
You have to pay a fine for singing or shouting
crooked at a machine.
With five days off and two in a safe place,
we're like an investment.
The Indian backs me up.
He backs me up against the front of the tavern
and does a dance with his hair in his face.
I explain to people guttling around him what he means.
He means he's working at dancing through the week
and staring at the burnt insides of eyelids
with a stomach full of the city and no socks.
Machines are creaking, mimeograph Tuesdays.
Tuesdays are sticking to Wednesdays.
They're running off Thursdays in case of increased demand.
But Fridays go blank, and trying to see Friday west of Monday
takes an Indian's eye.
It's over the brow of the hill like the US cavalry
with its spit and tarnish.
And suddenly dancing, I'm Big Medicine.
I prophesy nothing is going to work till it sings for itself.
Hundreds of want ads are flying from Pioneer Square
to Puget Sound like seagulls.
The beat of thunderbird is breaking on killer whale.
We all light up in the rain, and it puts us out.
The sun is scrambling off.
The Indian rattles away through a strange language.
Slowly, my arches sink back to the pavement.
My hair sits down, my chin warps shut like a drawer.
I put the touch on myself and start uphill,
a solid citizen going to pay on time."
[APPLAUSE]