for Henri Michaux

 

she walks like China
old staircase made of stone,
at 2 AM drunks trip down it
like an old cattle fence
with the wires loose

her mane, ticket stubs,
dust on the constellations,
someone in the men’s room
brushing his teeth under bright
light bulbs, her shadow across
the tile broken up by less than
shadows, she pulls in like a draft,
hooves no shoes, balances
on the rim of the marble ticket
window, measuring herself in
the plastic that took over time,
walking she makes sounds like
stones fucking on the lower floor,
passing the heavy arched gates,
track 39, trot, long wooden benches,
sleepers, guy with an old saxophone,
way past midnight, coffee, more coffee, smoke

yesterday’s air kicked up by the
escalator, tired cops, paper cups,
bookies, she’s clocked by the
drummers who play downtown, at the
Oyster Bar she tenderly licks clean the bowl
of a caved-in business man long
after supper, outside under thick
yellow lights a quiet parade of taxis

flicks her tail at a passing
whore, silent language of before
morning, in between loaves of bread,
bagels, cigarettes and milky tea she
strides, tan marked darker brown speckle-
backed, her arch like the stars painted above in
gem blue but real and no man mapped
them out, Time Magazine Hustler,
Ladies Home Journal, Hershey’s, Tic-Tacs
and Wrigley’s chewing gum, murderers and
dog walkers congregate at the fruit stand,
early morning coffee, no traffic, pale moon almost
gone, trot

she steps out, she is not
a myth, she steps out gallant,
a rat trips between her legs,
the drop of her four-step manner
on the asphalt awakens a swarm
of bees on an upstate cherry tree
farm mid-April, she stumbles a little
on the manhole cover, potholes, dirty heat,
jerk on a cell phone knees drop
as he sees her step out and pause
like a grand willow tree at the Park
Avenue entrance at 7 AM full sun
she’s lifting her mane to the wind she’s
lifting her nostrils, woman and her kid
waiting at a bus stop, street lights, sirens