Hazy Alley Incident

Girl shouting Oliver! at the top of the cut-through

by Jacob’s Gallery, you have now entered

the slenderest of histories, the skin-bound book

I store between my temples; in that mean

and moonless city, you must hang fraught

in your too-long coat, not a winner, but placed,

and in this cutty version of forever, forever

calling on your unseen beau, one flake in

a limbic blizzard, one spark in the synaptic blaze.

And now the rain turns, light but going steady

on the Willamette. Along the bank, I lift my pace

from devil-may-have-me to heading-somewhere

and still your mouth in the haze calling is

a ruby carbuncle woken by a miner’s head-beam,

the reddest berry in the hedgerow, which all

but the bird in the fable know not to pluck.