Diabolque [sic]
My voice is locked up tight in my throat like a scratch, a busted horn. A train starts up, up Liberty and a can shakes and my guts are scooped out.
You would run, you have, you don’t even mind the jammed-up streets on this side of the track. You would run, you have, gone with just a blue cigarette trail, past the people-eating Old West Side trees, round, up, up, up.
You’re walking between skyscrapers and you pet some street cat. I say wash your hands and gravel throat and a rough horn.
I went with her to abandoned tracks so she could photograph the twisted iron graffiti. I probably told her to wash her hands – like graffiti was the flu, and not to get caught. Devilish spelled wrong in French.
And I want my R&R, but I blew my nose and now I’m deaf, so I’m laying low. You would run, you have, and I should rub your burnt sugar hands all over the smear paint of the stinky iron hobo bridge where I wrote a dirty story about traveler kid sex. And I’m always looking west, ‘cause I don’t know the schedule.
I’m always looking west, where I didn’t swim on graduation day and big bush in my eyes and an hour too far north. And I’m always looking west; for you, I’ll go Dutch. I would run, I will. Big busted violins on the rails, but I will. You’re walking between skyscrapers, and don’t wash your hands.
