I skirt the park into the city blocks / where the grocer smokes over his rotting tomatoes, / a seamstress hoses her concrete stoop.  Green glass / and bottle caps collect along the curb, newspapers / tumble under blusters of boots.

Guilty as charged, yes, I was years in the pay of the Mad Men. / Drew on my deep word  hoard to sell / outdoor carpeting / and  washed over gold; which is to say: base metal gilded like / a dance hall don’s lily, who skin out, / bares all naked / for a fifty cent music video ; what else to do with my poet gift / starve in a garret-like backroom?

Early in de morning she fry him plantain / to eat wit he long bread, guava jelly, an tea. / She bring it to he as he sit tall on de chair / in front de telly. 

It wasn’t a real day, /  but two rather  /  luminous hours I spent in a kitchen / with you, the light coy with us until evening-  /  my blinking, rapidly, /  the way a girl did once in a film / I criticized as not worth the ticket’s price. /