sometimes curtains blocking sunlight
are only ghosts sometimes ghost light
in windows only a brightness beyond
the blue bridge I work beneath only
the bridge will lift us over the Allegheny
only the bridge will float us into the grit
of the city the people I used to know
I don’t know them anymore what is
a bed but unmade sheets soft silk
I must become a bridge to get
myself out of bed in morning sunlight
beyond the ghosts of days
I used to possess I was
a curtain blocking the trajectory
of my own light
(originally published in indicia lit, Spring 2022)
infrastructure
28th Street Bridge
Every time I drive the 28th St. Bridge I always make the joke
to myself– should I really be driving on this?
It’s a paunchy punchline to no one and still I apologize for it–
a comment on the bridge’s chipped green paint and rusted
hinges, the (perceived) rickety short-distance, its creaking (I
don’t hear a thing). How close I’ve been to a laugh, some snicker
into an abyss– I’ve said much worse to people and not apologized,
driving over the strip after a fight with my lover, suspended
in the air a silence like tracking a FedEx truck with a package
you know will reach you but when? That apology– the tethering
between the space of sound, the hum of a hungry engine,
covalence of steel and structure bonding across a void.
(originally published in where is the river, Winter 2021)