Night squandered on a streetlamp
—Keith Waldrop
I’m leaning over the edge of the month.
If I say January was rough will
August be better?
I take a photograph of a discarded calendar.
A bronze-haired lady crossing the street
toward me, thickly accented (Eastern
Europe?) says You like the calendar?
You can have the calendar.
How much to take out of me...The
dance of importance...Wondering
about tonight...I could convince him?
Tired of thinking or worrying or talking
on a blanket of pitch. Lean over to swim
in it. The painted clouds move one corner
to the other and the whine of the shower
upstairs. Swim into it.
A friend says he’s got two dates lined up
for the weekend. When it rains it pours.
July evaporates the bead of sweat off
Richard Widmark’s brow before it
rolls down his nose into a
crumpled wad of cellophane.
I shake his leg gently to wake him. He
jumps up. You fucking asshole he says.
