In sight of the dead generator,
you try your best to feel

strange sirens in your temples,
the clock’s metronoming
watered down in the distance
and thickness of crowds,

the one strained baby blaring
about the trunk-battered
walls, doors, window frames,

suitcases spit from them,
luggage gagged like tongues
from each home’s orifice,

the city pool purged of water
and its swimmers scattered
barefoot like gray floodmice
through the plaza in packs

past the school, the tile floors
bosky with books, beads
of an abacus sown through,

the city contents strewn
like this is a natural process,
some wingless migration.

The Ferris wheel’s revolution
completes in three weeks,
its gondolas pulled by wind
bored with rooftop trees.

You watch it as a cloud or floe
would be watched: breath
held, and patient for the rending.

So the city, in its concretes,
breaks into slower, slower poison.