A Phenomenalist's Guide to the Block
       

The block is hot as hell and
Chikungmrya is getting things started in the still water on the patio.

I have no sentimentality and leave my wedding shoes out for the taking .
Meanwhile, the printers below run off counterfeit bus tickets.

I get tired of writing how I talk and start writing how I think.
Meanwhile, a water stain starts from God knows where and Everybody knows why.

All the men on the block are paying deposits on glass bottles and having them refilled.
Soon the television comes on and boys with fashion haircuts run a length of green

incessancy. I find I work better while plucking out the bifurcated ends
of my hair. That funny man downstairs is always making the women laugh with jokes I can't hear.

Down there, they have radio and coffee and the seesaw of letters:
falsity, falsity, false. Meanwhile, the Religious Supply next door seeks only women aged 18-30

who are presentable and well-mannered enough to sell asceticism. I am out of luck.
A man in the nursing hospital across the way pulls back a blue primeval curtain

making a real disturbance. Meanwhile I, half-naked, rescue plants I've been letting die
on the roof. On the block that's hot as hell. Too much weeping now

for the death of Juan Gabriel. Get a hold of yourselves, good people of Mexico. The parade is tired.
An exchange student on her terrace shows a lank boy how to hula with so much sex it's absurd,

absolutely absurd. Meanwhile, a man calculates dough into a thousand airy sheets.
I can only imagine how sweet the vendor on the corner is being, protecting milk from the sun

with his opaque store. Using usted. I certainly don't deserve to be talked to with usted.
The best disposable products in all the city. The best plastics. The best cakes. Papers. Invites.

Chickens. Bus tickets: falsity, falsity, false. The best, most fresh water poured out just for you and yours
into a 20 liter jug and sealed. No airborne, sea-borne, land-borne, insect-borne disease possible here.

Meanwhile, two moths circumnavigate the cistern. 75 mosquitos backpedal in the water of the wash.
The exchange student lets us in on her love. Someone aims for the falsetto of a dead song.

And I am out of luck.

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Copyright © 2019 Kimberly Kruge All rights reserved
from Ordinary Chaos
Carnegie Mellon University Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission