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Surveillance Tape
March 19, 2005    File under: Tapeworm

a blur on the high-contrast frame, stop-motion stepping
through the post-office lobby so late at night: crouch
to the box door, envelope developed, scraps left in the

counter trash, a trace of being there: cut to parking lot
and sidewalk, strobe of a body passing in and out of the
sodium haloes, there then gone: elsewhere the monitor

flickers over transit routes, the light rail trains sliding
through their signal clearance, line manager napping
in the decaled hatchback passed out beneath a busted

lamp: spray cans click but there's no audio, the agent
in the booth can but watch as parkas repaint the car:
when it's over she rises on another screen and walks

from purview to purview, her every move in view until
the bathroom door: someone has tried to tape this too
but she knows all the tells, avoids the stalls with vents

overhead: her shift-mate, fired for tapping calls, sits
in the glow of his laptop monitor trawling porn, his
surf logged downtown, just a block from where she

watches: a photographer's in the alley setting a tripod
to take a span of office lights that morse all night
the goings and comings of third shifts and janitors

and maids she is also watching in her box of screens:
in his prism's edge, a detail he won't see till enlarging
prints, a trenchcoat at an ATM, fluorescent glare

from the pate, a face only she can see: detectives
scanning crime-scene footage for a glimpse of the killer,
gas-station camera with Camaro and Audi, flash

inside the door: a father checking for after-curfew
coming, a hair across the door, transparent tape
that tells: a casino boss worried over counters, the flick

of the eye, addition, the checker scanning each item
in the red hatch of my consumption: how many pounds
of coffee, of ham, how many doughnuts left until I get

one free: I push my cart from the grocery line, feeling
the folded envelope in my pocket digging corners,
the lens catching the glare on my head, flash inside

the door, recognition as she looks from the screen,
look up to see me frozen, washed-out, caught
in the act of being: a blur in the contrast, framed:

Posted by Jake Adam York at March 19, 2005 6:32 PM