The blasters have departed, the butts are all swept
now mongrels come to piss in the gullies
near the ring barked cypresses and the kitchen hand
wincing from cigarette smoke.
By noon all the boards are chalked
the first stoners sit on the church steps
the first cocktail is sipped, the ladies
aviators peered over and under and through.
The waitresses sore heels, her toes curl
when she speaks, bored
her meteorological mind is with the Mistral
the Cevennes, or Wolf Peak.
Humidity, hippy’s jamming and insomnia,
another sleepless night, open the window
close the window, cat curls in leg triangle,
thoughts with the love triangle.
You enter, like Ulysses knowing your head
and heart won’t handle the intensity,
so you divorce and timeshare the children,
sitting on stools, playing fools.
The square was quiet, now full
butts and black dots about our feet
he’s planning his irrational retreat
gold, myrrh, felspar.
A couple carrying their mattress
give way to a vespa, give or take,
hole or snake, his loneliness loaded like a syringe.
never going to be with anyone again, this week.
Her flingers flick specks of glitter
off her jeans onto polished travertine,
these vagabonds brandishing a partial map
of Montpellier, silently screaming over cake and cream.
A skulls worth of dandruff;
the erasure of our perceived mistakes
lying like a floor bound dart
or an island on the horizon.
You’ve read too much into her feet pointing your way
in bed reading Finnegan’s Wake
across the train views of a blue lake
that somewhere connects to the sea.
Almost all the men in my life are dead to me.
I have made these streets, and the streets have made me.
Novel 