Demolition

Sarah Jane Barnett

When I Become a Deep Sea Diver: he draws a pearl head and a pipe
for oxygen. Up, up, to the pencil surface.

He works late to plan the demo of a building that was a squat
for years. It echos with the noise of the bypass where traffic sweeps

a clumsy octave into the city. Sunshine Letterpress and Setters. He turns
back: he has lost his watch on the roof. He sits where the sun falls

into corners and onto a school of bicycles. It is 1980
and then 1990. It is 1999 and he wanders around December.

He drives his pretty wife to a party in the country.
She talks about their new Spanish kitchen and how she is afraid

the roots of the maple will break up the driveway. There are ways,
he says, a real possibility to stop it. Along the road the imagined forest keeps

on coming. Moths ghost like televised fireworks and her knees
are two pale discs in the dark: a proof of life. Some nights he wakes late

and chilly in a cinema. The lights come up. Up, up, his face
and limbs float. He holds out his hands.