Broken Window One Arm Raised About Jim Daniels

Jim Daniels Broken Window So you're looking for the last cloud's dark lining, the last true sin for those who didn't stop counting. Why demand bedtime stories when morning's shards slice them to ribbons? Tonight I ate fresh eggs for dinner, true dawn. I have met these small hens and I will testify I'd eat them too, me lips bleeding with their juices. My screen glows in the dark just like yours. When I pick cherries I pick the stem too just to throw it away later. That's the only explanation I have for red wine and dark secrets. Somebody's sighing in the other room, a late request for explanation. It begins to rain in all my misspelled scenarios. Two dogs fight viciously and everyone forgets. Even sin is not so easily named or located, identified, specimined. If we could be innoculated against it, would we? One cloud drifts by as if it has direction. My children were amazed to watch the airplane's wing disappear, wondering what held us aloft. We are still wondering. It all gets messy in the end. I meant to start with that. One Arm Raised In the park yesterday, I taught my daughter how to make dandelion chains. Our jeans were smudged yellow with the jazz of spring. Only a few puffed out for wishes, and we didn't need many.   When we finally reached the playground, we set our necklaces on a bench and tried to find and lose each other among castles and dinosaurs. She spun me dizzy on the merry-go-round, and I staggered Xs till my eyes turned back to Os.     Good for a laugh. Our imagined kites flew in the lazy sun. The drinking fountains had been turned on for summer!    A young man staggered to the fountain, one arm raised, blood dripping. He knelt on the dirt and ran the cut under water. He asked for tissue. I had none. He took off a sock and wrapped it around his sliced hand. Between thumb and index finger. Where you'd get cut reaching    against a knife. He was a lump of dark misery I could not explain. Or menace - who can judge with a five-year-old daughter upside down on the bars, swinging, staring?    We edged away from the bloody sock. On the bench, our yellow chains were broken. Some other innocent child scattered our curious disaster.       We gathered new batches to weave together at home but today they sit loosely piled on our porch, color draining. Jim Daniels' most recent books include Night With Drive-By Shooting Stars , and Diggers Blues. His next book of short fiction, Detroit Tales, will be published by Michigan State University Press in 2003