“Nebraska and Oklahoma have the longest contiguous border
Of any two states,” you announce.
Your hair stands up in corkscrews

Cunning, I discovered
Loss of legs an asset
To intricate motility.
I have little use

One sunny afternoon on Morningside Heights
From the window-seat of the Crosstown bus,
I gaze up momentarily between chuckles
Amid Jean Paul’s tendril-flower of allusions

Why don’t you go downtown—
in one manhole
and out the other—
past thirty-two

Knock on any door
For any real reason,

Asking for money, say,

You are seventeen, your name
is Sally & you
get wet

I set out a bowl
for the pepper birds.
“Pepper birds,”

In a city where I once lived, for many years
an old man sat on his doorstep, in his hand
a brown facecloth, which he turned
over and over, smoothed out

Is there an after-taste of life in these graves? And in the flowers’ mouths do bees find the hint of a word refusing speech?

While drinking from this cup perhaps inscribed with signs of blessing and happiness in an unknown tongue, I hold it in my hand full of its own lines I can never explain. Do these two scripts agree?