Summer Hunger, New York City

Start with the flat roof
where soot crackles under leather soles,
where pigeons peck crusts that wind lifts
over the parapet, necks jerking, faces turning
one way, the other, like windup toys
searching, waiting for a breadcrumb-dream,
as black grit drifts over tarpaper softened
from heat, days of heat pressed into granite,
into skin and skull, past bones to where
the sun scours cool reason away.

We set beach towels end to end,
let the rays toast one side, then the other,
turn our girlish reveries
to the Beauty of the Boyfriend, practice
the fluttering hand, the cinched waist,
imagine the rustle of a patterned skirt
all leaves and roses swaying just so at the hem,
consumed by what might
(it could you know      anytime now)
blow over the parapet.

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