There is this sunny place where I imagine her.
A park on a hill whose grass wants to turn
Into dust, & would do so if it weren’t
For the rain, & the fact that it is only grass
That keeps the park from flowing downhill past
Its trees & past the figures inside its statues.
Their stone blends in the sky where it stays overcast
See the stone is a kind of rain,

And half the soldiers trapped inside the stone
Are dead. The others deserted, & run home.
At this time in the morning, half sun, half mist,
Where usually three or four guys sit
Alone on benches, away from another.
But they look as if they haven’t slumbered;
If they’re asleep, they may not wake. . .
I only imagine it as a sunny place.
If they’re awake, they gaze into a distant landscape,
Not at the warehouses nor the freeway
Not onto Jefferson, in which they aim to defame
So they may be acclaimed

One man asleep on the bench was kicked
In the ribs by a watchman until he couldn’t move
Another was a small time dealer;
A small time dealer who dealt until he lost his groove
And the last wasn't there,
Not only for a court date, but for life itself.
In these ways, they are like Poe if Poe had lived a life of wealth
Beyond composing, & had been kicked to death
And then dismembered in a park, his limbs
Thrown as far away as possible from what was left of him
And to the three men, Poe would have admired them, & pitied them.
For Poe detested both a city with its traffic as well as a park ad rem.

In autumn the rain slants & flesh turns white.
The tents go up on the edge of the town, &,
In the carny’s story, everyone’s lost, not one to be found
And Poe, still dismembered, becomes no more than a point
In the story of his life, the cautionary tale
No better than the sideshow where the boy
With sow’s hoofs instead of hands, taps the glass—
When passing entertaining the masses,
Making people smile and laugh, not knowing how long it may last
And in the carnival’s spiel,
Everyone that was once lost comes back again.
Even Poe comes back to see himself, disfigured, in another land
With the others crowded around as they lick
Their cotton candy, & stare amidst one another.
He wants to see the woman
Who has fins instead of arms, & the man without a mouth.
He wants to see the boy that gasps
At his clear reflection in the glass
With a voice full of rasp,
Because there is one thing that he knows for sure—

The carnival’s close, only a few blocks more,
That he can hear the intermittent off-key music
Wheezing faintly out of the merry-go-round. . .
The traffic won’t let him cross. Weeks pass,
And then months, until the years go on with their wars
And the marquees go blank above the streets
Because no one comes by anymore.

Until the crowd now fills the little tent, and watches suspiciously,
For the crowd believes in nothing now but disbelief.
It might as well be music from the moon.
And therefore, at the intersection of radiance
And death, the intersection of the real city
And one that isn’t, Poe is pausing
In the midst of the traffic, one city inside of another.

The rain slants.
The flesh is now a white dust.
The cars pass slowly through him, & the boy keeps
Tapping at the glass, unable to tell his story.