how she places the enormous coffee mug
on the tiny round table

the way she takes
her coffee when morning’s gone

where she goes
to disappear

the graffiti she passes
along the way

questions not asked about spraypainting
and other noncontact sports

the tune she recognizes
but can’t name

the musician she talks to
but can’t hear

her favorite version
of a song erased

the technique she uses
to remember dreams

the one she tries
to forget everything but

when they collide
when they never touch

When you died,
there was no cloud

where I could store
images of you.

No one scanned
the photos of you

I carried in
my wallet till

that New York subway
pickpocket swiped it

while I slept.
You wouldn’t have

closed your eyes.
Your closed eyes.

I didn’t know
how to wear the grief.

Didn’t know how
to live with it

just below the surface—
an electrical storm

that might erupt
at any moment.

And you would have
already calculated

the joules of energy released
before the next thunderclap.

stairs light up
when you step
on them

the elevator
has lost
its mind

stops on every floor
except the one
where you think

you belong
the smallest
island in

the archipelago
floats away

musical instruments
hang on tight
except that piano

it’s already tight
the piano has been
drinking

it’s out of tune
and those stairs

and those freighthoppers
don’t care

First kiss in a shared
bedroom closet in New Jersey.
She would grow up
to live inside
the New York City subway

dwell time

long after moving away.
Would finally confess
the love of her life
to be a crowded train
rushing along subterranean tracks

on a sunny day
in October. Those closing
door chimes
ring louder and clearer
than any guitar

she mistakenly thought
was played just for her.

A cold second
Friday in May.
Who’s still frightened
by that missing floor.
Who’s still waiting
for the elevator
to bring us down.

This cold damp day
won’t find a mirror
for 8 months. Nothing
unfortunate about that
curving in on itself.
Nothing stands on end.

inside
never outside
a box in the crawl space
beneath the cellar stairs is where
she dwells

The joke is obvious.
The child is not. Anything AA
Bondy sings, says

to me, brings tears
to bent smiles.

The GPS watch
gets off track. I run loops
around the figure eight

lake, not in it.
I still don’t understand

why it’s illegal
to walk along
highway shoulders.

No one wants
to talk about
the irony in

are we gonna let
the elevator
bring us down.

Oh, no, let’s go.
Boy trouble with trouble boys.
Oh, no, that’s me.

Thinking we’re soulmates
because neither of us drives—
the biggest joke of all.

You were right. Someone should
take the wheel.

Didn’t get one of the cartoons
in The New Yorker
last week. Have always known

the joke is on me. Never knew
till now, no one notices.
No one cares. No one needs

to know
the miles I walked,

on what kind of roads,
in what kind of weather,
to get here.

Over the bridge
underpass, in through
the out door, up
the down

staircase, says
the lefty behind
the right-on.

Between sets, crack open a highway
to find a village
of ants as they scurry away,
having fed on the meat

of lost loves—or
memories of them. No space left
in the mannequin graveyard,

unhinged limbs smell
like burning plastic flesh.
So different from strands
of hair on fire

in the attic. Where they keep
the crazy girls. So different
from alcohol metabolized

into hot sugar breath
that cannot warm cold hearts.

Drop all the names
you have forgotten
into a hole in the street.

Somehow someday everyone
becomes potable again.

and the ink
gets him high
and not all swollen hands

contain broken bones
and a bag of dirt
nourishes a tree

before it finds freedom
in the disrupted urban
grid’s open space

and reinvention
happens in the grimiest
crevices inside a subway car

but what gets left behind
could be used to build
the next or

Sometimes she wants
to tuck herself inside a song
and never leave.

She doesn’t drink
or do drugs anymore.
She can still dance.

Prince is dead.
Go out, buy some colorful clothes.
She gets it.

She looks for a third
wind at the bottom
of an espresso demitasse.

That song
she’s living inside
will carry her

so much further.
That song,
that song.