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Description
Shine an apple on your shirt,
crisp skin & flesh crunchy,
but no taste of the near forgotten
sweet springtime sheddings,
no tastes here,

nothing worth carrying
across the river and nothing you can grasp
will make you better
than the person next to you,

the beggar has his arm around
the lawyer lying on the sidewalk
who is embracing him back with one arm
and fluttering the other to his neck
where Death bit and nestled and
spread like the cancer the beggar had,
like the cancer that has spread here
that no one has but keeps
people distant like black stars
with bridges built out of bewilderment
on spongy, common ground.

Sometimes, the gates will open and
a new citizen comes stumbling in,
still flushed with vivacity and a
peach tinge to their skin and
the wind carries sea salt air, I
smell the creakings of old books
and the seamstress across the street
says it’s the scent of spinning spools,
the butcher says dead cow and for one
moment I taste chocolate on the wind.

Then they slam closed, the wind is
gone and the absence would hurt if we could feel it,
and the new people put on the pallor the rest of us wear
like a shroud, staleness resettles on its haunches
and we are waiting again.