LOCAL ILLUMINATION
What else do you need to know?
Outside our boxes of light,
ghosts we no longer believe in
refuse to flicker or flinch at the edges,
prefer to turn us into fellow travellers.
A stream of vacant streetcars
trundles along the East End run—
over-lit studios full of dead air.
And Jay Kim, an all too visible witness
who can’t see anything, crouches
behind the front counter following
gunshots across from his corner store.
What else does he need to know?
Just beyond our cooking fires & torches,
night-blind wolves wait
patiently for chances to turn
elders into ancestors.
An old woman sheds her blanket,
walks out in the strange May snow
to interview the fireflies,
her inner light an incidental miracle.
But the fireflies have long since
forgotten to remind the wolves
to keep their social distance.
What else do they need to know?
ENZO NIMBUS
Here he still is, the fluff-ball of himself disproving
the notion that black cats can’t fly. Asleep on his perch,
his white left front paw probes the upper stratosphere.
As he dreams, his right front other white one whiskers
its way through & across the underbellies of clouds.
Nobody dares to ask him what he’s doing up there.
He’s simply gunning his customized Ferrari.
It has a muffler that barely purrs. Its perfect silence
whispers what none of us can ever guess.
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