DEPARTURE
I jiggle the key
in the lock
walk
in
there's a fifth of Yukon Jack
on the dresser
& there's a
note
pinned under the fifth
& there's an open suitcase
on the
bed
the fifth is half-full
the note is half-finished
the suitcase
is empty
her clothes are scattered
everywhere
everywhere
I
can imagine them
flying from her hands
collapsing like
parachutes
over machine-gunned soldiers
who never had a
chance
those poor shapeless things
the longer I look upon them it
seems that
I can feel nothing and that they
are doing the
mourning
the skirts cannot sway without the
magic pendulums of flesh
beneath
a pair of blue jeans is a crooked shrunken landscape
that a
spider now picks his way across
no more soft curious shadows
bras
panties flung
carelessly
and without promise
I strip
and
brushing the spider away
spread out on the bed
under my
shoulder
the crunch of a leather bodice
that can breathe no more
the
heavy sighs that filled it once
gone
she has
shrugged her shoulders
shed her
skin
now moves slick &
new
down the
avenues
boys' towsled heads turning
like
autumn husks in an unforgiving
wind
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