The City She Was

Red Baroness

28 Let Down My Bucket I kept hearing the small voice describe what I was missing or staying out of tonight: like trees that howl and have cooler things than arms. I heard: Give in. Or easier: Now. (Like orange loves the sky over a desert I’ve broken open stones looking for my part or filled with all to be the planet you want I was disappear then come back, disappear then come back) 29 Bay Bridge Abstraction Not just a surface. Embedded horizontals, the six-stroke face. Five o’clock in the afternoon. A dwindling black, high tide opened and entered: glass blue. Vermilion hot, then white turned over. The mirror is shut. No mirrors. What we know hasn’t got a body. The curved sky is always a road between us. Five thirty, the slack chrome tripwire. Ochre blocks recede the wall. The red slit down the left. Difficult to say which is the sun. ...