Portrait

of you: small girl in a torn dress, 

the dress is pink as a dream, a tongue, jacaranda-jeweled tree

a fire beside. What

is left behind is never

left behind if we never

disown its weight

Let her and her press

her body here

and there or lie:

you might become any burned house 

an open palm upon which these future ghosts will cut

astonished rivers

Everything, and yearning, might snag in your current

You might 

become night, a succession of her and her mouths

Lucid. A hot swift. A starling startling northwards. Lonely but good,

you’re so good that when clouds open over Fordham Road you

turn mythical

turn into a palomita and rise, rise into

smoke, a burn scar

a child’s daydream: am I becoming, have I begun