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boxed for the Wnal draping coming home from home sewn into its skin eyes hooded in refusal —what might be due— The Avenue of the Americas Alicia Ostriker february 2001 Above the tongues of taxicabs, the horns and buyers the teeth of buildings grin at each other, the institutions of media medicine publishing fashion know how to bite through human Xesh like hinged aluminum traps chopping the necks of beavers, or like logging rigs, those saws that go through a hundred year old redwood in about three minutes take out a thousand acres of virgin Oregon forest annually because loggers need jobs, intellectuals need the special sections of the New York Times stacked on driveways each rosy dawn, the Japanese need the splinters these pines and spruces Wnally get turned into, everybody needs what they can get and more. Yesterday walking between Wfty-third and Wfty-second on the Avenue of the Americas at twilight on my way to a good restaurant with good friends I passed three beggars. Wrapped in plastic. Why not say Ostriker / The Avenue of the Americas 229 beggars? Why invent novelty phrases like “the homeless” as if our situation were modern and special instead of ancient and normal, the problem of greed and selWshness? The beggars turned toward me I put money in the woman’s cup though I didn’t like her facial sores her drowned eyes bobbed to the surface as if they believed for a second something new was about to happen but nothing was so the eyes sank rapidly back like crabs into sand, and sorrow pressed into me like a hot iron after which I hurried through the hurrying crowd sky overhead primrose and lilac, skyscrapers uncanny mirrors Wlled with tender cloud bouquets to overtake my friends who had strolled ahead chatting so as not to be embarrassed by the sight of charity, the bad wet rag of need. Not Spoken Tim Seibles march 2002 As if thirst were not a wound. As if the thirst for company were not a wound. Consciousness the one shadow from which light grows. As if all the ache Xowed from the same bruise. Near dawn. My blood caught in its circle I think of your body your legs opening. 230 part 11 parading poetry ...

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