Red Berry, and: View from an Apartment

Red Berry

The fruit then. The fruit in the mouth, whole and inimical. Somewhere, a string quartet. Here's to the o'clock. Here's to all the different time zones. Here's to the whistle of trains and the o of your mouth. Alas, look how round her eye is. How red. In another country, a man remembers her skin, bleeding shamelessly. We eat cake and watch. Haydn, on the transistor radio. Here's to that country. Her fruit, his mouth.

View from an Apartment

Silver, scissory clouds with light snaking through them. Hats and jumpers, footsteps like ants in a flurry. She craved brightness and foreign films. To walk out of a building and squint, suddenly surprised by so many words. There was wind there, and trees which swayed like uncertain eyelids. Sidewalks and sun as it struck them. She knew that what was written was meant to be forgotten. Sometimes I sing so pretty it breaks my own heart. She was humming into the hemisphere, but no one could hear it. Outside the pedestrians gleamed like pinpricks. Someone somewhere was walking away.