Subway preacher’s
din of truth, he pities
us, each and every
redundancy, day in
day out through tunnels,
boxes on a chain
Dios mio, Dios mio
faces flicker in frames
each in his own office.
· · ·
Colicky boy, no
words for what he knows
he needs to hush
some insistence
in his lungs, raw
grievance—
cleft from another
and thrown
into his own form.
· · ·
Riddled awake
by my own pulse,
I unfold from another—
sleep’s cloud of things
in general, waking
full of distinctions
almost noiseless
in the dark, their edges
against my skin.
· · ·
Incommensurate
what the hand can be said
to know, the particular
weight of error
an opaque body in
the light of an idea
or the sun, a gesture
casting a shadow
on the sidewalk.
· · ·
I mistook something
for someone else,
shadow for partner—
an error, a flutter
between one and
one, likeness
a ghost—plastic bag
for a bird, a bare piling
for a man in the river.
· · ·
Beside me in half-
dark, illegible,
she dreams herself
apart, day’s current
ceaseless beneath sleep’s
muffled forms,
familiar refrains
become postures
I only guess at.
· · ·
Hours, breaths—
what I know known
only by counting
the ways they line
themselves up, nothing
to say that’s mine
or yours—pull
through like desire
without intention.
· · ·
Afternoon blank
as a cataract, the heat
held still while
men at dominoes
keeping up the count
play end to end
for nothing, tinny
mambo from a radio
six stories up.
· · ·
My body’s awake
but dreaming’s reel
of pictures still
flickers on the actual
wall, inarticulate
and almost like us—
something behind
semblance, a transom
flushed with light.
· · ·
Sirens lift into the
courtyard, pounding
concrete and each
other, signals
repeated until their
urgency dissipates
and the city’s shift
of sound carries
the particulars away.