Bannerbooks – Chalkboard

frail
winter-white arms
pocked by needle marks
(scattershot
traces the path
of migratory birds…

The diva’s tremolo sustained, a monarch swarm,
in shadowed box, the Duke gropes his courtesan,
only noticing…

Felipe rolls the hex of his pencil,
battering the blank page, staring
across the cafe
at the boy
who dashes neon meteors…

(Though the atoms of their bodies
could never
close the gap