Here I live in a garbage can. The pile grows bigger each week with the broken homes splintered all around. The white of the negro maid's eyeballs is the only clean thing here, besides, of course, the quart gallon carton of milk squatting at my door. I open each morning my neighbour's Times, whisked away from his door before he stirs.
Gloved hands leave no fingerprints.
And a brisk review of all our yesterdays is no sin. En route to perdition I sometimes stop at Grand Central to piss. In the Gents, each in his stall, we stand reduced to the thing itself. I look for the feathers on my skull, a band around my forehead. The stranger briskly zips his soul and vanishes past the shoeblack, who turns to shine a lanky New Yorker swaddled in the high chair like Lincoln.