Thursday, February 19, 2009

Thursday, February 19, 2009: On the Street…Sixth Ave., NYC

My sweat-wetted jacket, my silk scarf dotted with pinprick holes.
Even the mossy, stained granite wall
that I skim with my fingertips.
Everything’s permeable, porous.

What do I absorb from outside in? Of course, unintended scents:
coffee, curry, bleach latch on for hours after exposure.
But what else? Does my cell phone

burn my brain, or the microwave shrivel my intestines,
should I happen to stand in front of it, waiting? One guy I knew,
his infidelity was discovered by his girlfriend

who kissed him, slapped him. You smell like a woman,
she’d growled. What has rubbed off on me,
leapt onto my skin like germs,
lice, moss, ultraviolet rays, bandages?

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