Spring’s dirty car pushes past patrons & street vendors covering 10-for-a-buck safety razors, shoe inserts with plastic & fish mongers wave pompom swatters over the carcasses & racked jackets dull with cloud; washed down pavements in Paris-London-Rome, behind the Acropolis drinking ouzo from a copper pitcher— gack, surgical mask up, the lunatic biter of dusty yellow air begins.
Squatting on the curbside park bench, I tell him not to mention my name, astronauts from Ohio know how to let things drop in one-fifth gravity, the crater passed over Aunt Sue’s black & white among the Formica. Let people think I’ve got my shit together—wool gathering they don’t know I keep a dead bamboo to remind
