29.

I think she must be Death—
the one who knocked today,
a stranger with her box
          of poisoned sweets
to sweeten me.
The locks screeched
like a child when I let
her in. They knew her voice,
wet and green as snot.
The hallway knew
her too. How could it not?
She dragged her shoes
across the knots,
                    as if her soles
had memorized the wood,
as if her feet
or feet like hers had stood
in that same spot before.
I took her sweets but watched
her sharpened fingernails.
A treat               she hissed.
I choked on chocolate filled
with wine, purple-black
as iodine.

32.

In the city of machines,
the trolley track transforms
into a river. I follow it,
the dirge of humming rails
     more liquid-resonant
                    than any Vistula.
There’s meaning in metal,
although the books proclaim
that only stone can answer
to our exile          only glass
is vessel for the soul.
I do not weep beside
this Babylon, nor drown
the way my mother might
have done. I am the modern voice
and this my lamentation,
          a current borne
on electricity and steel