Service

                  The Con Ed statement
              arrives for Arthur
          who died on the landing
      I slit the paper
   with a house key
The bar graph confirms
    his current
        usage
            has not
                changed

Matinee at the Angelika

I have come to this dark theater not for myself,
but as a sentry takes his post at the edge of the empire,
to watch a three-hour black-and-white restoration
of a donkey standing in the rain until it becomes a metaphor.
It is a heavy burden, this cultural stewardship.
Somewhere, my friends are wiping the orange geometry
of pureed carrots from the chins of the replacements,
having traded the avant-garde for the nursery rhyme.
They have forgotten the crushing weight of silence.
So I sit here for them, slouching in the velvet,
exhausted by the rigor of doing absolutely nothing
so that when they return, the art will still be sad.

E14 6DQ

My friend Emma asked if the poem about the Pret bathroom
was about her and I said no it was about Rebecca
and Rebecca asked if the poem about missing the bus
was about her and I said no it was about Emma
and my ex asked if the poem about forgetting someone's name
mid-sentence was about him and I said yes
which was true except the person whose name I forgot
was his and the sentence was I still want to marry
and Emma read that poem and asked if it was about her
and I said no and she said good because she's engaged now
to someone whose name I can also never remember
starts with M or N something unremarkable
and Rebecca sent me a text saying she saw herself
in the poem about the woman who kept a list
of everyone who'd disappointed her organised by postcode
and I wanted to say that's not you that's me
the list is mine I am E14 6DQ and also NW1 8AB
depending on which address you sent your sympathy card to
the one I lived in when it happened or the one I moved to after
to stop getting sympathy cards and my mother read everything
and asked why I never write about her and I said I do
you're in every poem where someone says
I'm fine and means the opposite which is all of them
and she said that's not specific enough people won't know
and I said good and she said
you should dedicate the book to me and I said
I can't the dedication's already written
Dedicated to everyone who wonders if I'm writing about them
and my editor crossed it out and wrote
needs to be more specific who's buying this