(excerpted from Invisible String. the Eirie Street Press. 1990 with permission of the author)

I might not have noticed the black man but he glared at me, eyes glazed as he leaned against a hood and grasped it like a podium. When he lurched at my car, I wondered how he'd spilled that much paint: a dark red pyramid soaked his yellow shirt. The second I saw the ice-pick in his chest,

he fell. That last thing he saw in his life? A white chick with a shag in an old Pontiac. Street-life beat on like the bad music the guy next door won't ever turn off. A pink-rollered woman clasped o brown bag a boy sailed by on a bike too big for him while nearby, kids played as if nothing happened.

Someone's heels clacked the pavement like hail as traffic eased. I drove to a Safe-Way pay phone and managed to report a murder on Jefferson Street. The steamy lot, tar gumming up my soles, the cop's OK, Lady, then the receiver's thud, I've never felt so close to vapor. Even my clothes, drenched cool around the waist, spelled Forget it.