A SONG FROM THE SHOOTING GALLERY heavy with prescription pills arms hanging like soup ladles drinking coffee while dramatic spanish love songs wail from the jukebox and outside the dogs are barking and the sirens are screaming and the helicopters hum overhead oblivious to my presence the beautiful, big hipp’d mexican waitresses bring me solace as they swish from table to table refilling chipped, stained coffee cups old men cough into phlegmy handkerchiefs and the devil is in my blood and my pager buzzes into life dancing like st vitus across the formica table top what would st jude think of this or sebastian with his arrows? or padre peo or poor mute catherine or all of the other fairy tale characters bleeding and stigmata riddled from hushed classrooms of my youth? sipping a Jaritto soda from a glass bottle momentarily gripped by the beauty and sadness all around me sinking into a flaming pit of nostalgia and loss before Esteban arrives with the sacrament and communion begins.