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Fred Voss

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One Bullet that Will Change the World

A car horn honks downtown between 50-story buildings
and the lives of 30 men lined up end to end
reach back in time to Christ
walking what
will happen next on the boards of a stage who
will remember when he was born
in a taxi who
work his life away until his arms are numb on a punch press
so a man in a suit can laugh
like he is more important
than the stars a horn
downtown sounds
and a man in an 8th story room teeters between suicide
and the beginning
of a great novel a fly
that will be examined on a slide lands
on a parking meter ships
are sliding in and out of port with men
who smoke pipes standing on their upper decks a man
turns around and around in a cell
on death row trying to forgive himself
and the rest of us the clocks
are all inching toward appointments
quitting whistles
death certificates
as the trains arrive and a conductor lifts his baton
to begin Mahler the graves
are open the accounts
are balanced the lights are never turned off
here
where the assassin in a motel puts down the rifle and stares at himself
in the mirror.

 


In 2001 Fred Voss completed his fifth reading tour of Britain, this time to record a reading for broadcast on BBC Radio 4. He works in a 100-year-old factory in downtown L.A. with men from Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador, near where the original L.A. river once flowed. His collection Carnegie Hall with Tin Walls is available from Bloodaxe.

 

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