in my life my 
favorite places were just
places we could go

entire childhood 
days spent at the 
movies w/ my mother

this genetic wandering
a gangrenous limb trying to
snuff the flame of a self
extinguishing city

let your body go
in the liquid dark
of the lit-up screen

let the soup steam curls
into wind-bitten hair

ordering diner decaf 
after needless diner
decaf until 2am

I stick my hand down
your pants at the Cineplex
Odeon the whole city inside

and always amongst 
strangers never not 
amongst strangers

at the turn of the twenty-first
century what was a city but
a collection of people
w/ nowhere to be
sometimes christened
in droplets of another’s

meal that coronal haze
we are born into bacteria/
carnality/crowding

there are so many 
ways I could tell 
it but in 
all ways it would 
simply describe a loss:

how a body pouring
soup into itself
cannot generate
the necessary
revenue

all the comfort
a little cash can
buy

how space trans
muted into money
becomes vaulted 

emptiness 
the cities 
we built w/ our work
alien cathedrals
so un-for us

now the town 
even the count-
ry spits us out