I return to you because it is late in the city
and the avenues don’t end, it is always the hour<\/p>\n\n\n\n
of sirens bleating and the girl whose hands I hear
thanking the sidewalk for its canals, the child shaking<\/p>\n\n\n\n
out her father on the fire escape, the man who boils
in the caves of the building where I check the phone<\/p>\n\n\n\n
asleep in my shirt and listen to your lips, the sound
your shadow makes when you empty the windows<\/p>\n\n\n\n
that let in none of July’s darkness. I return to you
because I see you in the taxi’s humid season<\/p>\n\n\n\n
breeding through the Hindu music of corners
that stay up the whole night grinding their stalks of cotton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I return to you from all the Broadway that vanished here,
the people who parcel out their very lives to watch you<\/p>\n\n\n\n
birthing a pony in the orchestra pit, and the cameras
protecting the tall, emaciated oboe kneeling in the restroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I dismantle my theater cushion, map to someone else\u2019s thighs,
slaughters their legs have sung. I return to you, comb the floor<\/p>\n\n\n\n
for dimes and rice, hibernation money, and the husbands,
the husbands sipping water in the tainted houselights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I return to you because it is late in the cityand the avenues don’t end, it is always the hour of sirens bleating and the girl whose hands I hearthanking the sidewalk for its canals, the child shaking out her father on the fire escape, the man who boilsin the caves of the building where … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa867U-AW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2290"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2345,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290\/revisions\/2345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Rob Cook\u2019s most recent book is The Charnel House on Joyce Kilmer Avenue (Rain Mountain Press, 2018). His work has appeared or will appear in Epiphany, Notre Dame Review, Harvard Review, great weather for Media, Rhino, Caliban, deComp, Interim, On the Seawall, Borderlands, Barren, The Bitter Oleander, Hotel Amerika, Birmingham Poetry Review, The Antioch Review, and Crab Orchard Review, among others. He is currently working on a novella.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"