Where Is Drain Maytag Jetclean

19. Variation of a poem dated December 1926



a summer afternoon and a boy
calling the subway car
some money because he is hungry, he says,
for hours and not a morsel.
"Until accept some food " says
from the center of the stomach.
Your eyes fixed on his ankle ulcers,
in their teeth like sewing machine parts,
and then into his mouth cracked by the sun
and black nails have dug it.
"For the Love of God" , he says, while
runs his hand like a tray
and looked away into a world
that is not yours but not ours, and we changed
conversation, and God,
and threaded the needle thought
by saving us back to ourselves
while the carriage doors open and close
as
a mall where everything is devoured and passions are reflections of other passions
fossils. What if I were
this guy? What we found each
shortcut you and me? What you then for me?
Would you have ever seen in a subway corridor,
in one stop, hunched in the middle of the street, drinking rainwater
my shoes
broken and dirty and wrinkled clothes,
living our lives, or whatever of them?

In your dreams I cut your neck many times. __________________________________________________