Still Life, Park Slope

Out the window proscenium

Far and wide the tar flats

Shine sticks to the curve on furnace pipes

Yellow attaches to every atom of air

Excavates the blue round sky and lines it with silk

The streets are sunken gulches

Antennae go stiff when something strums them

The skin shivers with phantom grass

Such gaping illumination

held like a breath

and a small mason rapping at a stoop

ping pealing a coppery tune

atop the city piano, the opening

pulse that hints at panic and far off

echoes in traffic’s profundo—

                                            the dawn

incision drained away the night, the moon

is stranded. A spot of soap. The walk-up

soprano pours her ailing into the red-black

maple. The slippery elm’s wafer

seeds scuffle in the road like oats. Before they fell,

less-than-green, they tossed like sea-foam