Bridge

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For MJN crossing beneath,
for NYC connecting across,
for The Brooklyn Bridge rescue working destiny 

Advance your vantage
point,
this bridge,
collapse your facade of steel,
your gutted concrete floor. 

Collide your bridge maker
with mine,
collage your instinctive hand
over mouth with my eyes shut,
vocal chords spewing forth— 

a scream
a void 

to coalesce to convalesce
on one bridge
of material unidentifiable yet.
Coordinate the crossing,
bare feet, dust, and ash caked faces 

no veil could protect,
suits meaningless,
ties undone
till they become arms swaying,
a human chain
of events. 

A human behavior changing
never
no way
when
now 

your bridge maker, mine,
his, hers.
They designed bridges
to be passageways.
Make them destinations 

to be good to get no further
than this, this bridge
cannot be
a boundary
because bridges connect. 

It is still where it has been,
the destination stands
between these pedestrian elevating towers
still here.

The Take No Heroes Hotel

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Welcome to the inn
where no reservations are taken, where
possession is one quarter, obsession
one more, 

the other half 

a lifetime spent designing the perfect
room where relinquishment adorns
each and every square foot of space
to walk 

away from each and every hero
you took, she took, he took,
we all took,
save ourselves. Welcome 

to the color
of the first suit you swam in,
to the sound
of the first dive you performed. Welcome 

to the taste
of the first sea scallop you craved, to the touch
of the first porch
you danced upon—it is, 

always was,
The Take No Heroes Hotel
where we belong.

Sea Dumpster Divers

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What the storm asserted
the wave to lash,
what the hull cracking
separated bow from stern forever, 

what settled to ocean floor slowly
will reconstitute salvaged treasure.
If two people
someday dive into our wreck— 

and they will—to collect

our splintered mass
of a life gone askew,
piece by piece, 

what they bring to the surface,
what they examine
will be the new us, 

will be a restoration,
regeneration, the religion of us
carted to the surface
alive in their palms.

Letter #3 to the Mississippi

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She seeks a childhood face
along the East Bank, diverted and spilled onto 

an empty road, old railroad
tracks framing its riverside. 

That this widening band of water flowing south
could be the same river 

as the tiny channel
she waded through yesterday up north, 

that this unsalted navigational pulse
could reckon with her North Atlantic bias 

could all be a signal 

calling her to pause here 

behind a brick building in an old rail yard
(only a slice of river visible) to see how 

no other word, even in this midst,
besides saudade will do.

Namesake

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No more illusions of steering
this dinghy ashore in the storm.
It’s going to rock; I’m going to remain
the name on its port side. It won’t fade away.

Things to Do as a Tourist in Your Own Town

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Still pretending
to be a guest
in her own city, she reads a tourist
brochure pretending
it is a magazine. 

She squints to see
how out of focus
home can become. An entire page
devoted to gentlemen’s clubs. 

She doesn’t work it
so much less so each year
as she passes from eligible, young desirable
to this: a visitor
wise enough to know 

when to refocus, when
what fades is what goes
on display, passing through
on out. Every town’s got to have a place
to see naked girls 

going out of focus
in the dark.  Still, she imagines living
in a hotel, turns the page, what else
have you got, city?

Repainting the Mouth

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She is certain her mouth,
painted cerise,
will not wear away
too soon. She may 

become all lips
without limbs, without
a neck, without a torso.
She would still dip 

this color, with certainty,
to her brush. 

Long before
day one
there was
this painted mouth: 

Lipstick in hand,
she drew her mouth
perfectly without looking.
Later, watching herself 

be an artist,
her lips canvas,
she drew a cinnabar moth,
not a kiss.

Would Be Roadkill

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Either these falls are shrinking
or this river’s high.
Traffic stops 

for you when you no longer trust. You’re walking
across blind
spots, a stone embankment and swerve 

to tease the dead. You have predicted
you would join those left-handed ghosts
when the right of way 

becomes cursed, your body,
upon impact 

a weightless parcel 

through early spring
air. It’s always an April day
just a half hour before 

sunset—civility
in dimming lights dancing off
city streets so many miles before 

the skyline disintegrates
into a watery horizon. It’s guess work,
and it’s hard to know when it will crest.

Leaving Hoosierland

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A moving walkway is coming to an end, begin
here where passing through
is an industry. Will I speak
to strangers, you ask no one. I will
not use horizontal escalators
to get what I want, you state

plainly—rural routes
delineate a grid
unlike any you know now.
You remember how you did the leaving,
a wave from the way back window in the red
Chrysler wood-paneled station wagon

as your mother pumped the gas pedal hard
and away. East to Ohio was never enough. Farther still,

New Jersey, New York, Connecticut,
a town in Southern Portugal. An absence
for something, did you ever know, you ask. Some day you will
believe in the pedal steel
player’s sticker on an instrument he plays
that night in Indianapolis:

“Non-judgment day is near.”