I GHOST

If I say I
Am romantic, I mean that
Any beauty that persists

In abstraction does not belong
To me, any longing
That does not conspire

With me nose
To nose is inoperable and little
By little it came to me

That walking along the street I am
Saying something even
The streetlamps are doomed

To listen to, to
Embattle within, to illuminate
Without, I observe

The illiterate ramblings
Of the F beneath the softball
Outfield, buy a new

Hula-hoop at the carousel
Concession stand and envelope
The blood-coursing

Hands of a dark-haired girl under
The surveillance of many
Horses, lions, giraffes lifting

And sinking in the paradox
Of frozen motion, if I
Say I ghost hummingbird-like

Amongst the braids
Bobbing atop a toddler’s skull, I mean that
Nothing is safe

From the interventions
Of sense and the color
Of the human face is not less

Mysterious, I remember the broken
Nose of the man that taught
Me how to kill with the sound

Of my hands clapping and emerging
Into the eerily natural
Light descending on Astor

Place I have been
Thinking about the quirks
Of anatomy, how they

Resurface, how even the disciples
Of disciples have disciples and I returned
Danger to the tiny

Inner disturbances we share, your tongue paused
On my neck, your nails grazing
My back, I cautiously pray we have the good

Fortune to avoid the habits
Of reduction and I would have my ceiling suffocated
With aerial photographs of the Nebraska

Plain where my mother was
Taught to read, red
Rectangles abutting black, beige

And the occasional green, or Queens
Just before 11 o’clock
At night, its pulsing nebula

Congregating in veins the way
The body’s discarded
Hair gathers in airy balls

Beside the radiator, the subway
Warns if you see
Something say something

And that’s exactly what I intend to do.