David Cazden
Photo: luigi morante
Sali reads Turgenev, sits
next to a girl with loose
pants and a looped wallet chain.
They talk in airy tones
beside the diner window
where the sky is dense
as a Russian novel, and clouds nudge
ideas of rain
along the half bent trees.
They are involved, I think,
wanting to reach between words–
“When the hero died in his sleep,”
Sali says, “his wife sold his boots for food.”
I imagine boots
with worn tongues and squinted eyes,
leathery flesh like a book’s,
passed through reprints and generations.
I watch old words
taken up by slim hands.
And while Sali gives the girl a smile
I thought was meant for me
the laces of morning light
are already unraveling
over her arms–
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