Dissolving Over Steel Railings, Un-Drawn Windows, the Language below Bridges, in Advent,

the hem of a drizzled park bench⎯
prescriptions, illiterate sirens, sun-tossed sparrows,

ads and commercials,

our arrested, quixotic alphabet, our delicate
Ebonics,

directions to a Chinese restaurant
written on the empty factory walls.

Where K wrote my words
were like paper airplanes

even though I can’t write something
like doorknob,
or cell phone,
without making it sound sad.

Did I mention she looked lost?

In the calloused anatomy of buses, yellow cabs,
strung among the dark haloes,
the smog of euthanasia,
asking

to sleep, sinking, shipwrecked on her father’s
sofa, one last coalition of sighing coworkers
chirping child support,
probation,

counting tips and streetlights.

Say tomorrow,

it’ll sound like you’re looking for a church,
the DMV, wings roughing-up the smoked-out rafters.

Outside, a cradle of furrows made by machinery hymns⎯
the work area windswept, incandescent⎯
sawdust sheets below the dry creeks of doors.

Below the rabid tie of TV antennas,
we sat, scissoring out coupons,
a crinkle in the papered wind,

the hard rind of empty.