Pretend I’m Talking About You

I.

Who are you? rainbow-rusted route
What brought you here?! Your palms were read.
“Write poetry,” the palm reader said,
“And you will find true love.” You doubt.

Fluorescent lights flicker reflect
off water criss-cross currenting
betwixt the subway tracks something
is argyle and you recollect

Marine Bio. was your major
‘til you started trusting psychics.
Follow your bliss and dreams will stick
you oust Jesus as your saviour.

At home you post-it posit post—
the chaise, mirror, banana bread—
examples of parts of speech said
with no relation to their hosts.

“This is life and language,” you say.
You vow to battle speech machines
What happened at age seventeen?
“Got into wind-up toys to play,

spent summers on a fishing boat
to experience ‘harsh living.’”
but you stayed until Thanksgiving.
We are glad you wrote what you wrote

that you have an affinity
with music and the room you grew
up in where covering the view
of lakeside of virginity

a faded curtain yet hangs there
patterned in steam and tug boats
you are not fond of kids but goats
not embarrassed when your grandma
(whom you called, “Nonny-ashen-hair”)

held your hand on trips to market
even now you feel a closeness
to your toes even in adultness.
Wiggle them in their sockets.


II.

You were born on an autumn day—
that held both crisp and soggy things
maple leaves among mushroom rings
apple butter ripe bright decay

hot cereal gone cold and starched
shirts the crunch of sloppy kisses
under awning reminisce this
your lips were cracked sucked and parched

ergo, you know several things
about orange and assonance
ships, harbor, sea and ambience
about mulch and daylight savings

when you first smelled the East River
you released your cogent control
to transmigration of the soul
you believe relive deliver

you see a child yourself you posit
or as a female passing on
away across the street at dawn
you pull receipt from your pocket

to postulate her fears scribbling
plans to find a Brooklyn rooftop
where you pop open your laptop
to settle for the evening

to roll a cone of tobacco
to tuck behind the cigarette-
holder growing out of your head,
denim jacket stained with stucco

rummage through its pockets and find
hardened tissues from wash and dry,
an old matchbook from your last high
and a receipt with some late-night

epiphanies that do not sound
so smart now in your “creative career”
Appear austere with beer not ear,
you laugh stepping down underground

take a train as far as it goes
to watch a woman slip and knit
a story with each hook and stitch
she’s Scandinavian, you pose.


III.

Some of your best friends used to squat
in abandoned houses and hopped
trains and hitchhiked to thumb across
country. You regret you had not.

Some of the kids from your preschool
turned to cocaine for mind expanse.
You’re glad you didn’t take a chance.
Sometimes lonely at the New School

but mostly you’re relieved to skip
stuffy train stations and social
functions—one mathematical
thing your mind could not let you grip.

You haven’t owned a real raincoat
until today and even though
your pocket took a hefty blow,
frugally, you remain afloat.

Laid off from your construction site:
you stood proud in your union-grade
boots saying to your foreman, “I made
pro-dignity and will not fight.”

My feet will smell glorious now,
you think aloud. It makes you sad
to always see busty ironclad
women hovering a cash cow

you name him, Shepherd. He gets
the loot in some story, but not
yours. You are the line and the dot.
Despite your doubts and debts.


IV.

The true love you find in poetry
is what makes a true poet
one we cannot forget
as we trudge through the debris.