It was a human place. On either side
young women and young men held manmade things
contrived for widening their lives. Some held,

The skin is the largest organ in the body. The skin of an average-
sized man has an area of approximately seventeen square feet and
weighs about five pounds. —medical handbook

Setting: crooked Brooklyn—rendered beautiful by a night
of rough, wind-driven snow needled across building faces,
sticking where stucco has worn away over years—fragments
of exposed brick—hard edges of a first, forgotten surface.

"Ran afoul my nature to spend some time
in prison. To think
                                on what I'd done:

Does she feel safe there, between her dad's
big knees She stands upright or half sits,
red dress always the same, white underpants

Do you have a favorite time of day? Favorite weather?
Tell me about your writing process.
Is that so? I would never have guessed.

Though It Be Foreign, Though It Be Terrible

 Water pools the roof into mirrors
thin as any, the storm lilting

There the sun was, dying in the abyss,
in a haze of shadow, no sign of resurgence,
cooled, and cooling, slowly, dismally

I stand before this landscape at dusk
   jacklighted, caught in the high beams,
shocked into stillness, rapt, incapable

To talk about the weather is not just passing time
but an occupation in a city where weather
dictates streams of confused syntax like snow