published by Shearsman Books 2022

GIRLS, DOGS AND DEPLETED URANIUM

The season is saucy.
Private arrangements are turned inside out
like winter gloves so that a soft,
slightly moist fur of intimacy shows upon the street.
Only the stray dogs do not canoodle.
They’ve been spayed or castrated,
provided with an electronic chip in their ears.
So now they lope the boulevards
uncertain of what it is they’ve lost
like poets for whom nothing has rung true for years.

The day is not so much pert as awry
as though a storm has been about to break
for much too long in this city
of unexplained maladies and where the talk
is of how much radiation needs to be detected
while I wait in a traffic jam
three yards from flower girls half undressed
sitting on the steps of their shop with cigarettes.
One leans forward and pants out ribbons of smoke
and I can see the wet sheen between her breasts

until I drowse away
daydreaming of stairs with bannisters curving
beneath gilded mirrors that reflect
elegant disasters, armed bands moving
across the river in spotless uniforms.
There is a fizzing volley of rifle fire,
But not loud enough for me to have to raise my voice.
I climb the stairs, your right hand on my sleeve,
A counterpoint to my unease, as your left hand lifts
The hem of the folds of snow that compose your dress.

The streets are never empty.
Even at night they’re no place for a white dress
to drift as fragile as cigarette smoke
though the traffic and the heat are less.
I lose you where the stairs branch and branch again
as my eyelids rise and the flower girl dabs
with a tissue at the sweat between her breasts.
It’s said the road I’m stalled upon leads to woods
where the stray dogs run seeking a coolness to stop
the bleeding from their eyes and the burning in their chests.