of the water tower executing
perfect leaps, pirouettes
and figure-eights, etching
the ice with their intricate
designs until patterns emerge,
like maps (hopelessly over–
lapping) of their inner lives.
But, instead, dozens of pigeons,
their
wings
speckled
with moonlight, explode
from the clotted darkness
of the water tower, wheeling
into momentary formations
against the frozen sky,
where those of us quick enough
will read our futures:
the time and place ofour deaths,
and even the dreams we'll dream
tonight, sharp gusts hissing
like blades across the window.
Bruce Smith
AMOR FATI: BECAUSE WE OWN NOTHING
Not these snappy new clothes, this bungalow, these slightly three–
dimensional forms we lease, then
all
property is theft
and all theft sorcery the way the shoes were lifted
from the bargain basement of Strawbridges men's haberdashery
and
gift
wrapped against the store detectives,
the goons, the stooges,
my mother's enchanting invective
lifted me and made me go soft at the edges with the unseen
brogues so that I rose up the escalator
