After the Resurrection

To eat lemon
cake with a spoon,
to dream of walking on
that bridge with you

(not beneath it
in a tourist vessel),
to be so confident
grace will follow

is to be willing to go
where there are no
sidewalks and still reach
the hotel before it rains.

To choose to stay
there instead of in

a house, to fantasize
about local lobbies

and dimly lit bars
encased in translucent glass

and steel where the coffee is
strong and black, to imagine

the sound of an elevator door
opening at my feet

is the closest I come to memorizing
the music woven
into the fabric of this chaise
we might share.

Things to Do as a Tourist in Your Own Town

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?