Читать книгу Selfi americano - Curtis Bauer - Страница 17

Even today—sun

rising, heating, setting—

grass in the cracked

asphalt grows. Some dead

are gone and some living

buy tickets for a matinee.

My kid cries out

the upstairs window. Her

mother watches a neighbor

fidget with her purse

on the street. I’m fine. The dog

is fine. Everything’s fine.

The world spins forward

and no one controls it,

or the boy who sat on a bench

yesterday, his shoes stuck

to the gum on the ground,

his fingers sticky on the toy

in his hands. Someone thought

about control and made a call,

felt fear or the cause of fear

waited there in the boy’s hands.

The word end means you

can leave if you’ve watched

a movie, or you close the book

and reshelve it, or you stop

crying. The drunk man on

22nd Avenue wants his voice

back. No one knows how

long he’s been silent or how

to listen in when he asks

the chipped brick wall, Is it

the an-ti-ci-pa-a-tion or the act?

I want to know why I fill

with so much love

only sometimes. The plants

on the fire escape speckle

the alley with geometries

someone smarter could

turn into algebras of relations.

The sun is gone. The boy

is dead. His friend hasn’t

started to stop missing him.