January Spring

Write what you see. You’re outside. Look around. The black sky. The newly designed hotel. The gentle and hygienic bouncers. The secluded smokers. The shit-eating grin of a sale, a white-collar smoking its profit silly. Inside. Screens of manly men chasing each other down. Below. Panel of manly men chasing each others’ drinks. People pile in. Hold your air while you make your way. Bodily functions become a destination. Squeeze, squeeze, excuse me. Squeeze squeeze.

Find your place.

Unzip.

Then onward.

Red bricked aquariums where fish finally breathe. Synch their pulses. One-two, three four five. One-two, three four five. The fish find their place, you find yours.

Eyes open.

You watch them, these ballerinas of the moment. These unrepeatable Elizabeths of their own kingdom, dancing the now, gypsy carnivals of personality so beautiful in their not-thinking you feel yourself wake up just looking at them.

And standing at the grocery counter an hour before sunrise, handing the money with a silence, you feel suddenly, for the first time in just-too-long, like yourself.


To the city of so many quarreling boroughs, to the city that can light a spring into the winter, to the city that dances, to this city that lives without an hour or any goddamn invented point, to this city, this remarkable insomniac of a home -

Thank you.