Diptych Unhinged

A man without a home is a man without a God. Fyodor Dostoevsky

He stares into a pasteboard footlocker bought in Brazil — the Hoosier State —, numbed by nephthaline and memory.

In tiny corners of a boxed world a diptych of body and soul come unhinged unpacking in Narragansett — he tries to rest

in rows a cabal of clothes: four matching shirts from Ginza, a winter suit tailored in Tangier, three Thai silk ties rolled

like Lebanese cabbage, and a pair of jock straps from Dartmouth articles of amorphous intents refusing to defer to the geometry of a soldier's trunk. He starts all over again. He starts with a pair of Etonics bought at the Athletes Foot in the

Chestnut Hill Mall following his second move to Bean City. Tired but proud their snouts still turned up in defiance

they've carried him through one marriage, two new jobs a dead mother, a trip around the world, a colicky two-month

old daughter, and more. He stares till everything recedes into the rain. He doesn't smell the nephthaline or the earth.