I see you, bent in half, climb the asphalt that buried
the trolley rails before we were born. Sunday’s
our wet 3 o’clock lunch. I toss the literary magazine
in my recycling bin — Fuck the fake goths of New York.
You’re trying to sell your welder’s mask. You say
your eyes hurt. We curse and our curses clump
on the flowered linoleum floor — they cast a glow
against the shutters’ dust and grain.
something other than trains is making
faraway train noises when we look away — something
in the room is giving off a mild electric charge.
A Mercedes rumbles over a manhole. After wine
and popcorn, I watch you cross the grassy paper
street, toward the last cobblestones in America.
The cut mountain shades Herrs Island. Air above
the smoke stack remembers the work it used to do.
Rialto Street, our concrete waterfall. Route 28,
the fence by the wasted river. I see you.
I see you on your knees behind St. Nicholas Croatia,
your eyes closed, giving head under the spray-painted suns
on the boarded-up windows —
— Daniela Buccilli
Daniela Buccilli's poetry has been recently published or is forthcoming in Cimarron Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Paterson Literary Review and Quail Bell. She teaches high school. She lives in Carnegie. Many writers featured in Chapter & Verse are guests of Prosody, produced by Jan Beatty. Prosody airs every Saturday morning on WESA 90.5 FM.