Rialto

For love and every human act
closely associated with that state of mind

the dance is unending.

Soured like brown apples but a sweet tinge
of Iowan frost there

the elderly excavate the layers
of the safe deposit boxes
                                 —nothing
to be saved on our account,

the echo of streets saying run, deer eloping
with shadows dressed as wings

at the edge of burned grass.

                                 I’m with your body
every year in a strip mall café.

Barney mascot reels us in with shake
and shimmy.

How we said we saw the seeds of genocide

in that slave-wage dance, the willingness
to wear your skin out in the polyester fur

of a sweltering shroud.