Auscultation

Fame brings with it an afterlife, a chrome circle of light.
I wanted to be watching our world from under a thousand
watts, feathered, as the famed are and singed. Seems fame
got held up a little east of the word-weary Mississippi
and won't touch us tonight
                                          just as rain wakes bees
from a bottle. Let's rest our ears like stethoscopes
against this windowpane long enough to know a man
sleeps in black-lung-sleep, to hear mop water, river-pails.
Listen, love, machines are now washing the street.

Copyright © 2006 Carolina Ebeid All rights reserved
from Lyric
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission