Dead Engine

A rusted car with no hood
parked too close to a sapling,
long ago, now snared
by branches growing
in between the gaps
of a dead engine.
A gray cloth tacked
to the white wall
of a studio apartment
at the edge of the city.
It is used as a screen
by the spacey tenants
who projected old cartoon
reels they stole from
the back of a truck.
One day the new girl
thought the monsters
on the screen
were walking out of it,
and she ripped the wrinkled
curtain off the wall.
The blood in her veins
the same consistency
as mercury.
The picture looked less
solid on nothing but the wall.
No one spoke over the hum
of the projector, and no one looked
at the horizon at they ending of the day.
They just stared off into space and let it play.