BELLAMEADE STREET (2006)

Patrick asleep on the orange recliner
the soft whirring of the electric fan
late afternoon sun pouring in open windows
downtown Greensboro waiting outside,
cast in ancient white marble, immutable stagnant
weathered by the seasons
a portrait of Southern Greco-Roman stability the sun on
dust specks rising up en masse from a piece of carpet
books scattered on shelves and tables, across Patrick’s lap
years of pleasant memories here
I come back to this in-between place.
sleeping in the closet, a warm womb with white walls
fistdeep in the soggy mush of ancient, nigh-forgotten details
the visceral tracers of stories I can’t recall
quotations memorized and then promptly forgotten
you remember the shape, the outline
a garbled mash of intonations
abandoned buildings and the Quadratic Equation
drunkenly broken into.