It smells quite like a diner on Avon,
though I don't recall ever passing
a flapjack stack or waitress amassing
regrets (‘round her racooned eyes)
on my commute from the corner
to a cherry-red door, squarely sanctified
with numbered bits of brass (that just might pass
for gold, at squinted sunset).
I take the sidewalks blind and forget
where my feet are—inhale aromas sweeter
than should ever cross
a narrow East Coast avenue (dotted
with Gothics of varying hues,
kissing vapor and unbroken azure
with lips painted—I'm sure—in every
shade on sale).
And betwixt the pines and power lines,
a council of feathers endeavors and fails
to make headway—
a house divided
and writhing with chatter,
swapping branches and stances
on the afternoon's matters
to the smell of powdered French toast.
And the pigeons below,
left—at most—to dried worms
and their own, blue-collared devices,
beget zephyrs down-street—
hectic efforts to greet me: a pale crisis,
hopping crosswalks like batter.
I pay no attention to their paltry convention
tightly gathered ‘round slim pickings at the curb,
their treasure obscured (though surely the trappings
of a castaway morsel once sweet—
perhaps the lost seed of Atlantis,
or a long-abandoned waffle crust)...
...until they stir up,
like a blood-hungry dust,
to reveal my wet flesh in the gutter,
half-dismembered and picked over thrice.
I turn away
on the quills of a shudder
until they recover—
A slow glitch
in paradise.
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