"I cannot remember things I once read  
A few friends, but they are in cities.  
Drinking cold water from a tin cup  
Looking down for miles
Through high still air."*
– Gary Snyder

a cloud like the tower of babel
behind me, and the sun rides high
to my right on the handlebars of
six pm.

she cried to me that she missed
getting smacked little blows in the face
i told her that isn't a relationship

but it's only a little bag of dust,
she proclaimed and i wondered why
we are, ultimately, all made out of dust

our bones art frames for our
failing livers and kidneys and
me? well my lungs are perfectly fine.

the best compliment she ever told
me: i am the anne to her sylvia.
i sit on the deck of a street bridge,

the gurgling mountain creek
below me vomiting into a pit
of mud and tadpoles.

the cars brush my hair with
every pass or maybe it is the
storm wind from the tower cloud.

i am her anne, she said
she is my sylvia, she said
it is june and i am not tired of
being brave, i am

tired of waiting for her to be
saved.
Even gas ovens are made of dust,
somehow.