Not because the earth shook
I studied opposite understandings
in opposite languages.
But because there were collections
of arias in pant pockets, no longer
moments of happiness in my inbox
we keep newspapers safe reading
between the print.
To talk with a backpack
to walk with a pen,
can’t you see this city is
much of nothing.
Let me have the glass of gin
let us open the window
pretending to dance.
I sat at bars. We sat at bars.
We never knew our opposite
names in the airport I barely
knew what makes you curl
across the aisles it was cold.
Like a Manhattan morning
before sunrise our legs fastened
under covers, our bodies
undercover.
It was better, in which she left
for a moment, or moments enough
to ring out drenched comforters of
Brooklyn’s water edge.
//
I’ve written countless letters on bridges
wishing they were mountains.
I would catch you from the ledge’s
provocative ability to end the mess
of what reveries can cause.
Had I known anything, the glasses spilled
not because the earth shook
but your hands would not stop gasping.
Take me to airports, to edges,
to the beautiful land where living is different
in the same earth below and above
the credo etched in our skin: We Will Meet
when broken light weaves through quaking grass
when we’ve slated clean our history’s collections
of moments where earth splits under our feet.