This town

for didi, she doesn't get enough thanks, and I'm still writing poems (crummy ones, but poems nonetheless) because she makes me think about writing them, about the unusual ways words can hopscotch, about why that's even necessary.

This town

The alley next to my house
changes shape each evening.

Tonight she is a triangle

awake
suspended
equilateral

and she forces me to consider
the hypotenuse
the sum of my sides
the square of my experience
the three o'clock church gong
calling all good Catholics to confession.

I told the priest I wanted out.
I told him about my dead middle finger,
how it did the work of six strong women
dimpling wing tips in some old shoe co-op.

The alley trips me,
slips bent wire and styrofoam cups
beneath my bare feet,
swallows them whole,
spits out a callous,
a scar from childhood.

Triangles spell trouble
minus a "g" for gravity,
the alley's "a"
and of course my own "i"
which sees nothing but nightfall.

Tonight this town
makes me walk three lines,
two the length of my arms,
the final a tangent.