The City She Was

Acknowledgments

54 These Halting Plaints I am blameless but not blameless. I am pristine but not pristine. I am hugged but not hugged, all of us not hugged. All of us teem with shame but most of all me. I am plutonium but not that matter. I am with a curse on my head but not vexed by it. I am made a diffuse powder by grief but not spread over the city. Splinter but not aching. Albatross but not dead. Am love but did not. I am policy but not nervy. Peninsula but not district. These halting plaints remain basis for the teeming discord I am, a patient with a gram of mutiny. 55 Don’t I Disappear Come asleep, come purple deep. Come firmament, I sweeten the breach. I’ll hold you in my lap. You’ll be my gull, one bird for the whole year. Down one length, a pull. Down another, the one art. This path’s an alphabet. Each stone, a sound from your gorge. Your mouth is a fact, also a settlement, fugitive sensation I resist. A crime, finally, the abyss and your same smeared mouth. ...