I don’t know anything
here. your white collar shirt makes me think
I’ve never really had scotch before.
I say: here,
I am young. I go on lying.
He asks: where have you been?
I tell him it doesn't matter, that
we’re conquered people
of clean linen, of white soap, of our mothers
this, that once we were children
he says: childhood was a loaded pistol—
exposed at the bar ‘til dawn, midsummer
cocktail napkins with solemnity, and
memories of dreary Sunday afternoons
passed out in phone booths,
we’re still very small, he says.
I tell him not to worry
it’s always like that, circumstances.
the noise of the city that’s loud.
he says: I wish I could take you somewhere, go away
with you. I say:
the sidewalks. great crowds of them
splitting, the voices strident
he says I’d been asleep and he’d taken a shower
that it’s a city of pleasure reaching its peak at
night, how
he used to talk about staying at the Chelsea
with two brunettes in stretchy miniskirts
strategy: nowhere to go
and the party ended hours ago like
the instinct under our sweaters.
what goes on at night, anyway?
the elevators open and we stumble in the hall
New York, right?
one day she’s a goddess and next,
a woman with a few minutes before midnight
she says she made love once. says it wasn’t enough.
late afternoon and a table filled with bottles.
he sits on the bed, shirt rumpled, his eyes,
one hour and three whiskies later,
rain and the lights,
people.
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