page 224

in part

In an apartment in Chicago I'm waking to what
I think is your body curled around waking
sheet filled mouth and dried saliva in
an apartment in Chicago I'm

loitering on some sort of map I see the
rejected continents
floating about wildly in the apartment
someone offers me a joint first thing

and though I decline my clothes glow
grey green regardless I want to open the curtains
tell them you are
on a small breaking island say

I would wake up sputtering around
your apartment always giving up on sleeping
too early the girls and boys' bodies
slumber over couches and the cat

wobbles between them pawing
unmoving shoulders but you're not
lying in this first slit of sun not
on this deadwood flooring not

caressed by these insistent
these ineffectual paws