Curtains
Sometimes they are the only thing beautiful
about a hotel.
Like transients,
come winter they have a way of disappearing,
disguised as dirty light,
limp beside a puttied pane.
Then some April afternoon
a roomer jacks a window open,
a breeze intrudes,
resuscitates memory,
and suddenly they want to fly,
while men,
looking up from the street,
are deceived a moment
into thinking
a girl in an upper story
is waving.
From "Three Nocturnes" (1)
Imperfect dreams,
each sleeper hung
on the meat hook
of a question mark,
clocks stuck
on an hour
when loneliness
seems just another
way of loving
only yourself.
What's the plural of dark?
Nighthawks
reciting a thousand names
for night,
a moon
you'd have to sort
through thousands of streetlights
to find.
From "Three Nocturnes" (3)
Pizzicato of wings
against screens ... Listen to the roar
of weed lots, or the wilds
behind illuminated billboards
where shadows of nighthawks soar
across enormous faces. You'll hear
a hunger that can't be satisfied
in an all-night diner.
Night flyers won't let night stall.
Wingbeats fan darkness
as if it were a flame
able to flare up darker still.
In phosphorescent headlights,
projected moths
in which the moon is visible
unfurl from cocoons of oblivion;
time metamorphoses
into a perfume of black marigolds.