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
me I almost left my brother sleeping in Berlin.
