Manhattan, 2006
On 32nd Street, in Korea Town, alone
on the fifth floor, thinking of you
on a bed, unmade. Delivery
trucks below inventing idle love
call to men standing
in doorways smoking cigarettes. I call back.
A musician plays his saxophone beneath
a bridge made of stone. Slow notes tumbling
down my back as I walk
a path tucked neatly into a ridge.
A lover’s hand strolls
with mine. I imagine kissing him
open-mouthed, in a taxi-cab. Instead,
I sleep, I write
“I was here” on the hotel wall, later adding
“Where were you?”
:::|:::
At a museum I buy a book of poetry
inside it reads, “denying everything
I am looking for you.” I recite this line
at ten-minute intervals, throughout
the night. I walk Broadway
in a rainstorm—my first.
I believe
the city is crying for me.
:::|:::
The rain extinguishes taxi-cab lights. It fills
narrow corridors and building lobbies.
It holds me
down.
This is October and I would rather
turn my collar against falling snow.
Footsteps call for you, a slow beat. They echo
against the skyline, settle in the morning light.
By nightfall I have denied everything.
Originally published, in slighlty different form, in Poemata, Volume 23, Number 2, 2008.