Read Me

Found a poem,left by a officeron the sidewalkof an unnoticeable building.Like the City’s violation checkerstuck a vivid ticketin your windshield,but for passerby.What did the poet say?We are made of carbon,all in our current formsby chance.By creation.By conspiring.

The Sound Equivalent of Seeing Stars

My–The night wind squeaks.
Or is it the air stutters?
An odd creature is formed
aurally, out of suspension
of disbelief and also noise.
Or, parts of an unseen body
displace its environment.

Next to my air-conditioned
and incandescent filters
of walls, roof, wiring.

It is later than I have
promised myself to rest.
But I keep giving myself
extensions. Could it all
be the balancing
liquids of my skull,
my inner ears? That blank
where I am one of the few
who have no mental images.
And so must strengthen
our other senses.

New Orleans

New Orleanians won’t let you forget
you aren’t from here.
Even after a decade.
And neither does the feeling
you’re discovering a country
within a country, a separate way
people have for living
without your approval
or need for it. Coffee shops
that open after nine am
when you’re already at work.