Eight Blocks by Bernadette Mayer

Eight Blocks by Bernadette Mayer
for Bill Kushner

A very nice little purple dress
A box of colored film cans
A man with flowers for his Other, the another,
European women walking arm in arm
How lonely I am in long line
Cops saying it's not sensible to be
Pretty women of ethics, she sighs, I gesture,
She says, if you walk fast you get tired and if
You walk slow you still do, she forgot I forgot
The elevated fingers of the sun we sang
In just voices to virgin Mrs. Kerchief-Cane
(To backtrack on a walk's ok) who was that man
Who knew what was behind me, now it's gonna rain,
Wind on the fat man's flat sequins
There are two different sides of the street
Between them is the traffic of the avenue
There are four corners on which to meet,
French cigarettes in the Arabian window
The safe in the sweaty public school
But mothers and father are too early
To rescue each baby from a day of rigidity
Parents mass as at disasters and hide steps
They peek in the window of the locked room's door
There's that woman I saw this morning
Carrying her cigarettes like a wedding bouquet