Glamor on the West Streets / Silver Over Everything

from the humid brick building below my humid brick building, a woman

bellows at the pizza man. who, it seems, threw no cheese atop the crust

& its red river of sauce because—as he shouts above the sirens of State

Street & the growing crowd lined outside his shop—it is Friday night

& he is woefully short on mozzarella & there are far better pizza options

on every corner of this city, overpriced & tonight bursting at the seams

with lonely people who will seek the warmth spilling from the edges

of a cardboard box & onto their laps & into their fingers on the walk

back to a newly empty apartment. I love the heat for how it separates

the desire for touch from the practicality of it. If it gets too hot to fuck,

like it did for mookie & tina, then we’re all on our own sinking islands

anyway. there is no cheese in this town anymore & what could be worse

than the fraction of a dream behind every door you crawl to. it is friday & surely

some of my people are praising the fresh coin in their bank accounts & what

a tragedy to spend it on a half-finished freedom & the argument below has poured

out into the streets & the waiting masses & I imagine this is no longer over

cheese but over every mode of unfulfilled promise. the cluster of sins still stuck to a body

fresh from the waters of baptism. the parent who must dig a grave for their youngest

child. from below, a man yells there are only three ingredients. you can’t even get that right.

isn’t it funny, to vow that you will love someone until you are dead.