36
Pins drop into a steel cup.
The shake of a passing train.
Rainfall will end
up with a thin ice crust,
synchronizing storm drains.
Today: one more baby born
or border crossed, 300 million.
Street lights splice traffic,
Provinces of fire-blown trees
perilous paradise
Make-up kit spilled on the 3rd ave. bridge,
Minneapolis, red leaves, red lights.
Steaming custard buns
white surface, one dotted red
Mars hangs in night sky
Mother's microwaved dinner
Salty with laughing crying
Carefully prepared
in an old fashioned homestyle -
come home to old friends
Hiss of espresso monster
Conversation bubbles up
walk into the cafe,
to the back of the room
to the one face, beaming
Alphabet soups for sale, one
by one, constructing letters
Plate stained purple,
typewriter minus letter H,
free with any purchase.
Jackhammer shredding sidewalk
Farmer's market crushed berries
Migrant workers camp by
the millennial library:
the wait, the weight
Fishboats at the marina,
City of water and ash
The line snakes over
Boat rail, turbulent water
Dead fish on the pier.
Imprints of hands on windows
just before shattering
Each to a word, lines
traced in wartime letters
maps to our past
Still--we're under the spell of
the alphabet of retaliation
Wings rise east
misguided by burning treelines,
charred city -- a speck, a speck
Yellow bulldozer snorting
launches a swirl of seagulls.
Plastic covers sag with rain,
cranes halt above
the future hospital
Ideas of her self lurking
underneath overpasses
Leaf in clover leaf
Cartoon school bus wiggles by
Scattering the wind
She sketches loops and spirals
Pencil resting against her thumb
Labyrinth turnpikes
On the daily commute-
Tolls along the way
Speedbumps glazed with yellow paint
Sleeping roadway log lizards
Filmy fog distances blue
Structures, milks signals
From the tips of antennae
Peering down on the plaza
Speckled with light and foot traffic
Beveled histories
Facades of pilaster, plinths
Speak, La Place Vendome
Interpret the messages
The speech of cogs and branches
The coming of storm?
Trees in the margin
Italicized by the wind
From the bus window, the miles
Float under well-traveled wheels
Poised in the center,
Flung to the edge of the
Roundabout turning
Towers in the east are there
So she knows she is here
Saigon: motorbikes
Jammed at stoplights, exhaust fumes
Scattering insects
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