x

“Awesome, I understand,

But what does it mean, pulpit?”

She asks her boyfriend’s mother.

A young girl, eating a bird;

x

Slender, in a tube skirt, on Bleeker Street.

This is a shovel-ready project

Listed under mist, tea and heels.

She drips an eye-drop sharp as a tack,

x

And in his loft, her raven locks

Hide her almond orbs. They sip a subtle jasmine

After bacon somewhere on East Broadway.

Stephanie is Taiwanese, I imagine.

x

She blossoms off Canal Street,

A fan of inscrutable earrings.

The morning sun influences the air.

And the pills escape into the arm-chair.

x

As much part of Manhattan as the hydrants,

Uptown, their sallow complexions

Multiply among designer packages.

Stephanie intensifies my interest.

x

Her bare legs emerge from the East.

I note a noodle ideogram on Lexington

Layered over yesterday’s graffiti.

The offers come with spinning cup.

x

Invalid offers only get you nowhere.

Now I recall the spinning plates at a circus,

The west side gallery and a spring of steel

To the bracelet charming my upholstery.

x

Being an only child became a trauma

Only in China perhaps. BDSM leaves knots

As delicate markings on ivory flesh.

She wanted them to kiss, and I am reminded of Boucher.

x

There is that pretty painting in the Met:

A girl traps her sister by the wrists

So that she cannot escape

The kisses of a pre-pubescent suitor.

x

It is an only child who imagines this.

x