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—

And here I am wondering about a simple hesitation in  your ankles,
an unruly lock, a cracked note.
I explore your landscapes—estranged bride,

I am convinced that if I died she would be really annoyed. So when I realized this—that die “real” is actual and potential —I could swing both bodies at once. And one morning on the broad avenue I did and she was there. Her reaction—whirrr clikk—pure nonchalance, walking along as if she were totally somewhere else holding hands with a moth. The sheerest nerve can catch die smallest thought. Read on and learn why.

She was not so sweet as you would think.
Not in the damp of her hair, not in the joint of her bones.
This you can believe:

As if it’s important that summer remain 
here on the river’s bank, the tree sheds 
its fainter leaves: mauve

Elsewhere, the tree-of-heaven grows—
in deserted parking lots,