fiction 

dark walk / wrestling by the edge of the void

 

through an aeolian harp made of bone plays today and 7 and echoes of 9/11 and chloe in the afternoon and nausea and comforting chamomille and the memory of the Baudelaire verse that rustled in his hair back then—

 

7        7        7 and the fleurs du mal in (memory)

 

in someone else’s transposed memory.

tunnels of fire, stabbing victims in the empty hall 

the girls are fighting by the edge of the tracks

and the boys are wrestling by the edge of the void

who knows what they’ll be-

maybe nurses, or thinkers that cure ills unsolved by Freud

 

2        2        2 and the smog on my face that night in (memory)

hear the Baudelaire verse rusting 

in the memory of his hair

I think you had a cruller & I read Paris Spleen 

under American Idol playing on the flat-screen

 

4        4        4 and the window by the bayside in (memory) 

walking home see the lost man 

shimmering with blood-pathogens 

and a dagger-stare

more characters in a B-horror slasher scare

 

9        9        9 and the strange things you said in (memory)

the girls are fighting by the edge of the tracks

the boys are still wrestling by the edge of the void

who knows what they’ll be- 

scholars, kings, or dead on opioids

 

5        5        5 and the way my heart moved in (memory)

the screeching actress with cherry hair

says to the empty train-car 

that her last class was too method 

she’s sad and I make up songs for her

and the kid down by Grant’s tomb- - 

bless them all

 

1        1        1 and the champagne in the alley in (memory) 

I wish you were here too 

to make a world above above it

like a glass bridge or something

I asked you for a lot of things and you never asked

except to riff on a tune and photograph my collarbones-

but we’re not that way anymore

capitalizing on our feelings.

and living in the daytime.