by Dan Raphael

“she was doubled over, like there were two of her, the one
    who’d done the running and the one who didn’t know why”
             don delillo

if the streets had no names could I get home,
if I couldn’t count the blocks & curbs sluicing glacial water,
downhill ice glistening from a thousand suns,      sun in so many windows
                     now the curtains been eaten
               pressed between newspapers soaked from the bottom of wastecans
       		      skin must be peeled,    pores rubbed into powder
one of these houses is mine:
                  I walk rumpling like a congery of abandoned clothes

when the wind whips
when the truck disintegrates        all it carried
the driver thought the truck knew where to unload
we couldn’t jump that high
             my hand wont open like a flower--
            the vein in the middle       sliding in several needles at once
across a room of shutters & shattered baths,     hallways with names,
i stand before my reflection does     door made of sky
the house spits me onto the street and folds away like an indecisive newspaper 

if thumbs had wings
to whistle when nipped
chewing like beavers gazing at the chunky stream
barely lit, refreshingly absent
hands go through like gloves shot from guns

a time few got far
shirt made of someone else’s skin
responses to responses
folded into the batter poured among bricks:
straight waves,   like escalators on their sides,    beached when the city moved,.
I wanted to be effervescent but didn’t know how to start

I don’t want my property to keep going
with a wind rising from my feet       simulating readiness
neither hand knows         walking backwards perhaps
rising from a paved horizon

stopped by something hard throughout
my practice is never the same
melting in my hand     mouthing frostbite
a fly on each side
odorless traffic
hands clasped like a bell pepper

that’s not rain