Ming and Al
“All I wanted was a Garden of Eden.”--Antoine Yates
After Yates was arrested in East Harlem, Ming and Al were alone. The rabbit was good,
but hunger can have little to do with what fits in the stomach, just read MFK Fisher.
Three days in those close rooms, and they didn’t come down on each other. Truth is,
they weirded each other out, always had. People insist oddity is the basis for friendship
among misfits, but Ming and Al would never miss each other. Yates had held them both
in high esteem--a place so cold it should be snowing, Ming would say, if words were
appealing. Al kept looking for the truth to bathe in and was insulted by porcelain. He
just knew he should be hanging on the surface of it like a cloud in the sky. Ming slept
in a state of velocity, mysterious tundra opening his mind. New York’s Finest shot him
through the window. No matter, he woke to familiar stripes and the scent of snow. Al is
contributing to a population explosion in a subtropical state, no longer of the mind.
Love this poem
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