Things Fall

Things fall behind things all the time
It’s nothing to cry about.
We women know about these things
We men who dye the grey out of our hair
How the dye pools like blood
around our feet in showers
 
The neighborhood is peopled 
by black cats—always watching
rarely approaching.
Neighbors are watching through slits
in their curtains
They say, you are taking
an awful lot of walks these days.
 
I saw girls dancing in the rain 
under your streetlight
Their feet shattered the puddles
and the rain flew off their curls  
 
You can follow the flies
to the dead things
Nothing is wasted
it’ll show up later
maybe dusty, maybe shrunken
like the tongue we found on the curb
becoming mysteriously smaller
each day
 
Her blood pools the color of bubble gum
down below on the pavement
You thought you heard girls 
singing in the night
but it was just the garbage truck

You watched the rain flickering
in its strobing lights
the pool seeming to dance
in the shifting glow
 
You can suck yourself in 
to make yourself smaller
so you can slip through slits
in the doors 

You’ve lost something
I’m not sure what it was
You put a Christmas crown 
on its portrait
and put scarlet on its nails 

So, we dance in the street  
13 minutes between sundown
and curfew
We have lipstick
under our masks
we say it doesn’t matter, we know
 
We play dystopian games in the street
we count syringes masks gloves
The winner can pick   
from the box of pilfered things
 
We do a scene
the neighborhood children
cast me as a jar of jam  
They shatter me
and lick the remnants 
off the cement like cats.

It fell through a chink  
it came loose of its chain
it slid off the windowsill 
and fell into traffic

But you have it back now
or something that looks just like it

Actually, it was never really gone
it had to pick up its new body
from the dry cleaners
it was leaning against a streetlight
whistling and jingling coins in its pocket

waiting for you to be ready

This piece, created a few years ago, is an ode to my neighborhood, with the sound being a direct recording from the street that inspired the poem. The written version differs slightly from the video.