The City She Was

Beauty Regimen

13 makes an illegal, a yuppie, a salesgirl or an angel of the hole I make in the fog. 4. Throw romance over a bridge, through a toll, in the alley, under the billboard, to the curled fingers on the window, kicked to the curb, off-ramp past the homeless with the wilted sign. Pamphlet the whole city with your tractate. 5. The day is bare as white, so I stay inside lest the wind change me. I sort my miniskirts to trade with skinny girls at Buffalo Exchange. The shops along the avenue offer new strategies: to be modern or demure. Minx or Library. I could be the whole beachside, cold and bleak and briny but homey nonetheless. 6. Loneliness hides in a corner to tell me about the troubles he had ...