Not satisfied with it yet. We shall see what comes of it.


RETINUE

I have come here
for you,
to this the ugliest city.

I tell you that
I dredge the lingering streets
with gluttonous fingernails red
from scraping the gloam
of taillights off
my cheeks.

night vaults the slum
and gloats atop the sexy billboard—
that brown bramble of legs, you
know the one—
I would clamber now
and ascend the blue scaffold
of your flesh
for which my
fingernails have so longed.