Poetry

Have you noticed the horses galloping past us?
Perhaps they are horses with no riders at all.
Perhaps they are riders who have turned into horses.

There was the knife and the broken syringe
then the needle in my hand, the Tru-Cut
followed by the night-blue suture.

On seeing you that second time last night,
Pat Benatar a disembodied blare
amidst a night yet ravenous for dares,
I thought I’d talk to you, to ask you why

To bring the night sky to life,
                                          strike a wrong note from time to time.

As the Rialto burned
I stood across the street
in front of the dry goods store

Down empty roads gray with rain;
through branches
of new leaves then still
more light than leaf;

This is what it was like: the morning
pale all above me, a patch of sky
like a blue poker flung into a floor
of earth, this is what I have to go on.
I am on my knees at first, a Jessica
in prayer.