DOWN ON THE AVENTINE

By Charlie Coleman

with the picnic blankets and glass pipes.

and the wreck when i saw the christopher street

of that second week, where were the split lips, i thought,

where were the indeterminate flows? you talk me up

until we’re both hopping to the subway. everything infinitive:

to slink (the candied ladder of avenue A), to listen (that evening

street singing out misplaced collars), to climb (the generation

of crumbling city walls over the rivers of spit).

roman SUBURA or sitting in the park and wanting you so bad.

lamplight and painted faces waiting for collapse

they said it was decadence or not enough sleep

or slow trains or the smiles woven into dark corners.

the same song in four clubs and i’m back on christopher

christopher christopher street it slides into idleness

licking shattered wax off the sidewalk

on the way to the next, by the ancient section

the truth is every poem is the street i live on

and every street here is better than i could write.

the light on the steel on winter mornings,

the divine panoramic of the night with all the things i could say:

brown boots and windows screaming in the bathroom

and the martyrs in the square selling cloth and

the gardens in april and polysyndeton and you so far away.

come home with me. we’ll take the express.

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