Taking Stock
I took a picture of a wall in Brussels:
A pair of painted eyes above a dumpster
in the alley off my hostel’s
nearest laundromat
I took a figure drawing class in college:
A series of restless models and hands
shaking with all the inexperience
in the room
The day our model missed the bus
our teacher had us crosshatch
a perfectly still and limbless
plaster statue
Sometimes I pin it to the wall above my head
near those eyes printed on stretched canvas
Sometimes I put it in a
filing cabinet
I can’t unburden myself of even this
forty dollar writing desk let alone the contents
within a failed summer
in Oakland
The summer where everything was pretending
except for love and hunger shoved inside
an impulse buy from the
Uhuru shop
Carried down and up every flight of stairs
Guts spilled onto softwood floors
in every apartment in every city
of my twenties
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