I know I am caught writing poem
after poem after
poem: odes to the girls
who have perfected the
backwards step onto the scale
who know by uneven hearts their
silhouette in neatly creased
paper dresses. they tie at
the small of the back, shivering
in plastic chairs swinging
unshaven calves.

this is a sterile temple. Once you
leave you crave that chemical
scented silence.

I know I am stuck writing
poem after poem after
poem, odes
to the girls who have perfected the art of
getting on scales backwards.

Manhattan, I sleep in the bed

by the radiator
by the window in the room
on the east side, my slice of
space wedged nearly in the steeple of
the episcopal church so I wake up to bells and
the sun in my crepe paper flowers
that catch the light in folds
of pink and orange. by morning
I am sweating. Broadway and I
are bedfellows; it runs from my toes to
my head. I fall asleep with my cheek to
its breast on the chest of heaving
sirens, of street cleaners and
car alarms. I wake to Church bells and
taxis caught in my sheets and
this city is like sex, an energy caught in
bed, an intenseness that
sleeps until church bells, awakens,
stretches its limbs inside my
skin on skin, a friction, the
heat from car exhausts.