Skyways run between second
floors in an irregular pattern
she forgets to decode.
But she believes she must
duck
when approaching beneath—
her pedestrian movements
can be so erratic, better
not to risk it.
Then I Will (Day 2,518: Take 2)
Take away all definite
articles overworn
and shaped to fold
as tightly as a cliché
in a cheap plastic frame. Throw
leftover scraps into a tipped
over metal ash can
before flames burn
another year’s calendar
beyond recognition. Steal
another man’s thought
after an October
snow leaves a bouquet
of unlabeled white
traces and artificial heat.
Across Times Square Is Paramount
I.
You are the axes, bowtie, pivotal moment
we all pass through to get to the other side
of our lives. This time
I’m emerging from Penn Station, heading your way
along freshly rained-on sidewalks—the tourist
thicket watered well. Your required spectaculars
advertise everything but
this love story I have left
to tell. Will he be jealous? I wish
I could tell him I cry
whenever I see his face. But I don’t. I do
when the Friday afternoon slow river rushing crowd drags me in. I am
so in love. Would he be jealous yet? I check
the Chevrolet clock. Into the transverse LED net—Broadway,
42nd Street, 7th Avenue—I become an endangered species
in an island sanctuary, practicing the art of intentional
walking. Always a little subversive on these streets. I am so
in love. Beyond you, west along 46th Street, through scaffold mist, my love is
Paramount.
II.
The hotel looks the same.
Stainless steel, concrete, a hundred shades of horizontal
gray to subvert the vertical noise outside. Rose
heads protrude from wall surfaces without newscrawlers. Fog and January humidity
get smuggled in waves through the heavy swinging lobby doors. A blue floor light
guides the small hot elevator as it rises 14 floors. The same
floor-length mirror and barley twist
rail greet me as the doors open. Room 1508—another small one,
the bathroom sink a metal funnel that drains the tear I give away
as quietly as the shift in my mouth’s shape. Down
in the Library Bar, I don’t drink
all those glasses of Shiraz. I drink black coffee for free and know better
than to wait for him to arrive. Would he be jealous yet? An emotion
he hides so well. I can only manage to say it once—in reverse. There is no story,
no plot ready for neon streaming, only enough character to walk across
the Shuffle in well-worn heels. It’s all I have to show for
you—how I learned to recognize my love of place,
over person or thing, with no jealousy left to pass through to get to the other side.
Sobriety Haiku
by Tom Altenhoff
Seven years, so soon?
A veil, a lifetime ago
And now clarity.
Threshold
I let the spider go. If
the cat gets it,
that’s his business. I’m employed
by other fears—larger,
invisible, transportable up
the bedroom wall
by other means.
Talking to the Streets
To avoid loose
structure, she steps around
the porous stretches
of your concrete skin.
Call it superstition—don’t
step on the crack in any sidewalk.
She calls it the wise
way to construct
a commitment from you
in a faithless world. If
she believes you can
hold her up, will she believe
you will? Strike out
the ending and the sag
in the middle, she seeks
a taut you, abhors
the tremulous, falls asleep
to the vibrations rising
through the grate,
a compressed force
she would not dare deny.
How To Get Here
If this moment respects
its elders, if I honor
the memory of a lover’s laugh,
silence, topography
of an old acrylic seascape painting
gently against my fingertips—
if
I could be so expansive
with what’s left inside—broken,
scarred, intact—I might begin
to understand how to drop
this word
nostalgia
on its head and see
it shake itself free
of the mockery
and disapproving stares. I could
touch it without leaving
a smudge.
Notebook Primitive
That these ruled
lines offend
her is a symptom,
hers, of obsession.
She needs to draw
stick figures
unencumbered by wires
and shortest distances, tight
ropes and narrative’s longhand
script. She knows
they’ll walk out
on clouds of snow-
covered mystery, but
at least she can pretend
she set them free.
At Northrop Auditorium Watching the Martha Graham Dance Company
Hand over palm of other hand,
no one sits
like this anymore. But I
do it because I
want to invoke a god
to this dance
I watch, wondering if
it’s being done right. Because I
need a divine
answer to this mortal question:
Is it ever done right?
I wonder what happens if
my heart stops racing
long enough. There’s a girl
who was born yesterday—
and hers is beating just right.
Day 2,549
A pause in yellow.
She considers turmeric
gold, strands of hair
silver, the burden of living
is always bronze. She considers it
a relief
to put change on the table
and walk on.
