The same high, pointed fences guarding nothing
I want. The same flat spill that says I will
lie down at the slightest flinch. This is new, this
reaching to admit a subway run through me.
If the lake will have me. If the lake will let me
say, this was home. Wadded, tooth-marked, dried,
the tilled word insists on its tiny flavor.
My kind of town, it says, My kind of city,
hacking up a lung. My El, my pallor, my gas-
fed water, tell me how to touch your walks.
Remember how to swim? it says, Do you still
know how to save someone and not drown?
Appeared originally in Guernica.