August Kleinzahler

I

Rain streams from the stucco parapets of the Boomerang Academy well after midnight, early autumn, along this deserted stretch of Broadway between the railyard and boarded-up emporium where Aunt Peg got her trousseau, Dolores too, in the year-aught-something at the bottom-of-the-world.

And it roars in the canopy of leaves high above the sedate brick offices of the law and publishing firms...

Luminoso e dolce

Suzerainty

Impetigo

Colourless green ideas sleep furiously

Titrate

Spinners&darners

Farallons

Dag

Frottage

Slow loris

Gating

A bit of the other

Cuisse-de-nymphe

Chamfer

Amber, civet and musk cods

Wahoo McDaniel

Chlamydia

Mortised-and-tenoned

Huitzilopochtli

A bit of rough

Chalumeaux

Dingleberry

Esculent

Wing-nut

Sforzato

Ten dwarves took turns doing headstands...

Red pear leaves take the light at four, and a patch of brick on the south, rear wall stripped of wisteria: the two reds embering a little while then dying back into the shadows. A corner of the afternoon is all, maybe half an hour, not much more – October, November ... the beech tree bare now.

Sunday’s blow would have done it. And always the Interstate out there, like surf,...

It was a lost dream, a bridges and heights and headed home dream, but too long, far too long and mazey and all the wrong tone. And then there was that station, so massive, with its tiers, platforms, girders and steps, trains rushing through on the express track, filled to bursting, commuters illuminated, each face vivid, highlighted – is that you? – exasperation, fatigue, concern...

The planet may have tilted, if only a hint when the shelf of cloud burnt angrily before dusk           jack-o’-lantern stuff

her hair the colour of her coat, fallwear

      *******

The wet stain her bathing-suit left on the bench           the shape of...