you pointed out the city is turning into
an antique market: children the color of faded bronze

selling roses. where women carry bread in their coats
and a man throws a cigarette to a pigeon.

drain pipes, tin roofs. loose pine bark beating
against a tree and the old ballroom music

of someone’s voice. I lay down in a bathtub
in a blue dress, look to the newspaper beneath

peeling Soviet wallpaper. I try to describe the deer
I saw, suckled with light. how he will turn

to moss-shirted wood, how I will dissolve
into the wet wood of the city. my words

stutter like the flicker of tram wires
in a moon-rusted night,

as my first memory did, hunger flickering
like dead stars. after the bath, I dance atop

a mirror, the sound of dogs howling around me,
howling, the sun spilling its sand over my hands.