Ultimate, white-haired
bandaged at the eyes like judgement
you lie at the hospital stainless faucets and the pipes

Uptown for freelance techwriting,
then home. The mouse hole at
the stove needs plugging. But first,

The blind boy taped you and we clapped
starving beak after crumbs
hoarse with cancer and one breast

Sheen on your hair on the back of your book
jacket. Intellect’s steel, perhaps I said.
My friend and teacher until we did not talk,

I want to wake her, run to greet her,
even if she were dead a hundred years
and showed herself as no more than a shadow

The river icy in the wind.
Jersey glinting from night’s amalgam. Neon shines
from the luminous, frosted window.

Suburbs shrill with Nintendo warriors.
Ten o clock: a queasy Pax Romana.
The ears of our mother's cancer over.

In bold black type among grayer headlines
All Time High—Maybelline Stock Hits 60,
Board Acceptance of Buyout Thought Likely.

And so I went forth, exhilarated
in uniform: worn-through jeans, muscle tees,
stripped of bras and ancestral history.

Of course how could it be different?
We haven't changed:

late summer—