day's end

The unflickering fire of sunset in the windows.

blanch

A pile of fine chalk dust on my desk in front of the classroom.

Road salt against a telephone pole, small round balls of it clinging together like styrofoam.

Snow sideways in the streetlights.

winter weather

A fine crust of snow on the balcony, shaped by the wind.

reality

We eat at the diner next to the now-empty Real World house. I wonder if the Real World Roommates ate at this diner, if the camera angles and fast cuts made it look more "interesting" in the episodes. If the filters made the neon lights brighter, the cheesesteak cheesier, the diner an approximation of a diner. The real world blurred and fictionalized, baked, cut, frosted and served.

30th Street

On a thick column, the shadow of the statue's wing.

Snow Day

Grass looks greener when it's poking through snow.

Shannon's room

My friend Shannon lived in Boston for a few years. She worked as an RA at a boarding school, so she had a tiny room and bathroom in an old stone dorm. When I visited, I slept on the top bunk, and we talked and giggled like Girl Scouts until we fell asleep at night. She also worked at the YMCA, which meant that she had to get up early in the morning, four thirty or five. I remember the grey light through the window and the warmth of the flannel sheets from LL Bean, the smell of french vanilla Dunkin Donuts coffee, and the pleasure of being able to fall back asleep for as long as I wanted.

The light is the same today -- grey sky, snow on the rooftops.

Fidgeting

I have a pile of clay poker chips on my desk, next to the computer. I sift them with one hand, overlap them one on another and then move them back into their neat stack, over and over. They're vaguely nautical -- white with blue stripes on the outside edges. I don't play poker, but I admire people who do, the ones who play it for their lives. I like the clicking sound my chips make when they snap into place.

Food Court

The cleaning lady leans on the counter to talk to the high school girl who works at the deli. As the mall shoppers finish their dinners and the workers clean up, new tables and chairs are brought in and covered with tablecloths. Lighthouse candle holders and napkin rings on every table. Buckets for vacation raffle tickets on a church-supper table outside the popcorn store. People in gowns and tuxes coming in to replace me in my jeans and sweatshirt and the other mall-goers in their newsboy hats, sheepskin boots, shiny hairsprayed hair. A man directs another who is moving the new cars that have been parked on the mall's main floor. There's a sense of pleasant activity -- the food court workers getting ready to go home, the store workers folding sweaters on cardboard cards, making sure each corner is square, each pile is of equal size. The caterers ready to start their night's work. The rich dressed up, excited to see each other and maybe to compare gowns and careers. There's a boat show at the convention center. We would have gone, just to see the big boats, see what a boat show is exactly, but tickets were fifteen dollars apiece.

We buy a bag of popcorn and go out into the cold night, to get a frozen pizza at the 7-11. And when I come home and ask L what I should write about today, he says, "write about the mall, about the guys moving the cars and the lighthouse stuff." So I do, I write it without knowing my place in it all.

Dear Connie

Today I bought an ice pick. Wood-handled, wood-sheathed. Like the one we used to open your mail. A bargain at $3.50. Already I'm afraid I'm forgetting, on a slow train away from the city of you.

Hotel Apollo

Skinny, three stories high. Burned-out, skull-socket windows. When I moved here the windows were full of broken glass. Then there was a padlock on the door, now plywood reinforcements. And they've fenced off the street in front. Something is afoot.

A cold night

The lights of a far-off building shimmer in the rising heat from another.

Compounded

I wake up with a sore neck. I look outside and see a man on a bench in the rain, head in hands. It doesn't make me feel better.

Offseason

Yesterday the Cira's lights were Eagle-green, but tonight they're back to blue. The building's top is lost in mist.

The Hawk Again

He lands to rest on the gold cross of the Basilica and I realize how big it must be, to make the him look like the smallest sparrow. He drops off, flaps his wings, and glides, making small adjustments.

Outside the Public House

"Be right back," the man calls, and runs away up the sidewalk. It's a duck-run, awkward, exaggerated for his friends. "Dude, where you going?" his buddy calls, the two girls giggling beside him. The man's steps lengthen, the wind presses his business shirt against his chest.

Quarter of Five

The buildings gold with setting sun.

Unseasonable

Confused trees
budding in warm sun.
Still January.

Clearing

Rainwater sheets off the new building site onto the street. Behind it, Liberty One is a deep blue, reflecting the newly-cleared sky.