100 Overlook Terrace

The treed street down from the apartment

          building’s entrance overhung but cheap

isn’t exactly unfamiliar but seems

          unfamiliar the way a body is your own

or someone else’s when your eyes cross

          again and again I enter a tunnel

at the bottom of the block a canyon draining

          the people gone it’s never as cool as

you’d like and no place to sit I think

          I am a cotton ball like rubbing some

thing renders it numb-er or makes a person

          residual nights it’s like nobody

even exists I look at the baby blue tile and

          behind it glimmering rough neighborhoods

I view through my own wall in other

          words marring them it seems too safe

here my own body its ravines its grace

          isn’t urban enough there isn’t some

pathway to a clear pool only this tenuous aerial

          aspect and nobody else around