Striking down Avenue A, our blood aloud
sang that humming cinder sound of traffic crushed.
Everything blown blond and the dry lust
that arrests every sense, a lesson:
All you can taste is the hint of slag and ash
while in the streets our numbers careen and list.

So what’s next on the summer something shit list?
(Who says anything about desire aloud?)
My rubber heart avoids being crushed,
a squeak toy bleating to Manhattan’s lust
the after-hours song and dance lesson
with smokes in a row and in the pocket, ash.

Sidewalks sprawling like a lash—
kohl-eyed charms across charcoal lists
penned jangling, a loud
swell of night (attacks!) and then into a sun-crushed
taxi, bald with lust—
having paid for a lesson

Where there is no lesson.
Only my sunburnt eyes on the ash
of gold-leaf skin—the skin itself a list
of destinations laughing aloud
mapping addresses and alleys in crushed
veins and a certain hunger. The lust

that now prowls our lips—the lust
that howls smoke and whispers lessons
for tourists, and outside, all ash
and an impossible list
of language tumbling up, aloud:
accents and conquests crushed—
The city its own religion, crushed,
disembodied, a tunneling lust
done with irrelevant lessons
except the ceremonies for ash.
Lined and lined up: “Am I on the list?”
Who is everyone wonders aloud.

Oh this breath aloud, the quiet wound crushed—
And with our plastic-handled whiskey lust, a lesson:
this, a river of ash and oil, that spills and lists.