The fan stirs
the air fat
with heat and water,
cooling it almost
not at all, and out
my window the two
green globes above
the laundromat’s
entrance are lit
up like a pair
of weird nipples.
Past them a cream-
colored wall, a
window, some
windows, the horizontal
stripe of indeterminate
color that marks
off the roof. A moth
hits the screen. A
car in the parking
lot scrapes to life
and creeps off.
And on my desk
an old jelly jar,
emptied and rinsed,
and in it flowers, or
pencils, a little water in it
maybe. And the fleur-
de-lis in a white
wooden panel, paper
clips and scraps of
paper, the sissyish pink
cover of Keats’s
sonnets. Rumbling of drunk
kids in the lot. A bottle
breaks, the noise
rises and moves
off. A head just barely
visible floats
behind the unseen
others, calling Ese. Hey
ese. Tranquilo.
Tranquilo.
