10


Sad, alone, she is reaching for the world

with the mist of her breath on the window.

She wears a double string of tarnished pearls

and her wan eyes are punctured by sinkholes. 

She flies first class to Rome and Venice,

summers with vintners in Napa Valley,

vacations from thought in Los Angeles,

and hops the first copter back to the city.

She's tennis white and can read a sonnet,

and pretends there is young in my stubble,

and writes of corsets like a baroness,

and can pluck a rare bloom from the rubble.


All of it lies, but what does it matter?

Poor boys like me are easy to flatter. 



originally published  in The Brooklyn Rail