D. Nurkse

They pay us time and a half
and don’ t dare catch us
drinking: we don’ t insist,
don’ t pass a bottle, but each sips
a private pint, all sitting
in the narrow room with our backs
to the center, each facing
his work — router, stain tray,
buffing wheel, drill press —
and with that sweet taste echoing
in our bones, we watch our hands

We brought that newborn home from Maimonides
and showed her nine blue glittering streets.
Would she like the semis with hoods of snow?
The precinct? Bohack’ s? A lit diner?
Her eyes were huge and her gaze tilted
like milk in a pan, toward shadow.
Would she like the tenement, three dim flights,
her crib that smelled of Lemon Pledge?
We slept beside her in our long coats,
rigid with fatigue in the unmade bed.
Her breath woke us with its slight catch.
Would she approve of gray winter dawn?

It is the great arguments
we are proud of, over a nibbled peach,
hair in the comb, a faulty lube job;
the reconciliations were always naked
in borrowed rooms, sometimes in Queens
or Staten Island, we touched each other
shyly — we reminded each other
of loneliness and funk and beautiful pigeons
with oil-slick necks, cooing bitterly —
but there we lost each other
in forgiveness; keeping score,
being wounded even in triumph,
walking home down leafy avenues
etched with the faint double line