Some people are like cats. If you hold
them too long, they will bite.
So she stretched out across the cruel unbroken,
rolling flatness of the Midwest
to Chicago.
Mrs. Dalloway among the macramé,
finds her sheets in the rehabbed SRO
clean and tight.
On her nightstand
brown bottles, and tan
bottles; a découpaged Kleenex box,
and two tangled charging cables.
A glass of water
rests on a paper coaster,
next to a leather imitation radio,
imitation in the sense that we don’t
need radios anymore.
The thin walls are broken by
a chicken-wire window
flecked with white paint,
looking out on a dim parking garage.
She discovers a little company
in a jumble of used books,
wan finger mechanically lighting
upon each title, hoping for distraction,
but finding none Inside New York, in The Un-
Married Widow, in A Bengal
Civilian, a cheap red Gideon Bible,
Parrot Blues, or the third volume
of Battles, Drums, and Geysers.
She wriggles in and pulls
the beaded metal cord
on the wooden visor
and dreams of black swans.
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