Comparatively Speaking
by Jake Maynard
When the stress pinches your shoulders like a piecrust. And when
computers collude against your shorttime. And when the fog on the
windshield won鈥檛 wipe away, and when even the hobos by the bridge
can see the dry-rot inside you鈥搕hen you can take your money. Fly to
Spain. Walk the Alhambra gardens with an orange bud in your mouth.
Hear the marble lions purr; watch their fountains feeding the Cyprus and
Rose. You can take the old road to the campo and drink bum-wine under
an aqueduct, pitted like your father鈥檚 temples. And when night blooms
and the bread鈥檚 been eaten, when the dew returns earth鈥檚 dust, you
can walk the cobbled Roman road, wine-blushed in your airport sandals,
a drunken toe bloodied from a chip in the stone. You can touch them,
those stones scoured slowly back toward nature鈥檚 shape, still warm and
firm in their tucked places. They were set there by slaves.