The neighbor’s buddy watching my screen through the window
Because the tube is turned to the window, the neighbor’s buddy coughs
a cough of pigeons. a hack of grackle. a bird out the window. It’s like
the neighbor’s buddy on my ledge, smoking. The neighbor’s chum in the blinds,
the eyes that peer, the eyes that open. propped and sunglassed. a kind
of smoking blackbird, an inveterate
tombirder. His leather wings are splayed. his rock in the cold. He has one foot on ice porch
and one foot wiggle. one foot rockerbird. a one-foot band. His cough is the cough
of the myriad smoker, the murder of smoker. There is quiver of murder. His cough
is the cough of a white boy, northern. of a Michigan leather. of the white boy jacket,
his leather like hair. The air is gray like cig smoke. gray like ash.
gray with the onset of northern porchlike spring and its porchstep rain. Wet
and snowy, the neighbor, his buddy in leather. like me, in leather. In a wet snow,
rocking. in a porch band leather. leather in April. April wet and still, one foot to the other.