it’s been days, walking past

these sad, pretty lawns
same words to my neighbor:
“I live there, near the dead end.”

but his dogs don’t hear

 

across the hill-house,
there’re dead souls on my left
and there’s night beside us, listening to our laughs wondering at my husky voice
as I pronounce America:

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(the slow-paced one
of cars that wait from miles away
to stare as I walk across the white lines)

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and it’s been many months since –
of beating out the horror from the night,
laying them in the fire
those winter nights, as we watch our skins glisten in the fire

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and there’re quick smiles in the street
my students tell me there’re types:
in the time between the eyes and the widening of the lips

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and there’s the stranger still, by the corner

“do you smoke?”
I can’t tell why he asks 

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