tips to glass, this

Stocking the fleeting street of 14th
this last night
this darkness

you point to her escaping shadow
as we pass by in this, the taxi.
Strict corset of scaffolding

the pinched nature of her sidewalks
where “curb your dog”
was her only whisper

my fingers pressed into
the rubber window seal
this missing crevice

supple under fingertips and yet
and yet not mine
We tapped our windswept coddled way

from Central Park down.
We drowned out the light of the rainsaturday
that first weekend

while lately we lurk in the silent
stolen of night
creeping through the trembling town

all ten fingers touching this –
the blinking
I am in the center of the universe

Hazy with peat
the smell and likelihood
of this march circle round

and begin again only this time, it seemed
only this place.
We are gazing from across a table

lit by wax and wick
and Maria Callas is speaking across the history
though she is dead

we still eat canolli to the sound of her yearnings
and outside and still
each avenue speaking

through piss and smoke
I can’t contain the bleeding
what kind of blood did we leave here?

Why should she care for us?
She gave it away.
As we glide by in our yellow capsule of transparency

she does not wave back
in this nightscape these streets
where we removed layers like fabric

from the constant hardening of exterior
We did not choose the street corner
but we choose it now

You didn’t need to call out my nakedness
I couldn’t stop it
I couldn’t contain

The streets, the sidewalks, the brick
framed window that let in the sounds
of garbage removal at all hours of the day

half drunk and soft green in the scattered light
I live there; another double life cylendrical
and then another

In the blink dark
I could feel the breeze of tonic September on my bare legs
tonight this city takes my backbone

and creates phosphorates
and in her only acknowledgement
she asks me to glow.