is this a jisei
the way I love fall
more than any other season

the way a sax wails
out an open window
from an apartment building

across the street
to turn my life into a scene
from a film noir classic

a gray cat licks its paw
on a window sill
one floor up

if it weren’t so
black and white
you could see the leaves

on the maple below
turn red
as death

this life
no longer
chronological

wild white horses
running through the marshes
of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer

trample over a blank
page to be filled
by another day into night

I’m trapped inside
a bathroom with a tempermental lock
in a door prone to swelling

dangerously / a copy of
The Prison Diary of Ho Chi Minh
the only reading material available

“And through the air-hole
the moon smiles
at the poet”

Amitav Ghosh reads
from his new novel
Gun Island tonight

inside a church chapel
far from the basement
banter below

where will those horses
and fellow flamingos go
when the Rhône delta drowns