I can see your dress dance down Broadway, shimmering and
floating through the lights from cars drunkenly careening,
forgetting everything their fathers never told them,
driving like their brothers won’t attend their funeral. The pupil
grows when aimed at something its carrier loves and even
in the streetlights that blind the Saturday morning blackness, mine drink
in the world around your prancing distance. Can you smell
the chicken, freshly cut, smothered and fried on Friday night, like our
joints, burned down to the roach–pass it once more, let me swallow
burning paper, scrawled with forgotten reminders and rolled to aid our unlearning.
I’d ask you to walk with me through the yellow street lights like stars, but your moon
is farther than these boots can stomp and my yawning has usurped
my mouth, words coming out just vowels and growls: can you still see me,
Ms. Eyes-Behind-Your-Head? Can’t you hear the roar of drunkards drifting
toward your tenderness? So obsessed their steering wheels become alters,
their prayers become poems, their last thoughts become splattered against
your spotlit stage, mixing blood and dust against stoplights at the Alameda intersection.