Mostly

And don’t you love this city— every high-rise’s story?
Medical red glow from the hospital room: a girl rushed to that
new world verge by her dying Japanese step grandmother’s:
Your grandpa’s voice so sexy low at Son Kim’s karaoke party,
nice for an American. Or, the Grove apartment complex,
where the Ravi family has made their home—The mother
bathing her children as she cries: Your father says I don’t
show him enough public affection, but in private I’m good.
Their first night in the Motel 8 after a connector flight
from New Delhi and London, there was no one to call
for the balcony’s hurt bird or her guilt, sleeping beside
those green wings, knowing she’d fly away if she could.
And of course all this is imagined, or more, what I’ve gathered
in store lines, where someone was rude to you and
I needed to write a poem about how beautiful you were.
Hadn’t felt a poem in ages. But I used to write madly.
This was before an understanding of form. Tonight though,
fuck all that, I’m just trying to reach you over market crowds
packing produce before long commutes, downtown
radio symphonies, and paper bag-blown winds—
Every sound that moves me to a memory of you and
someone else from that year and this city. Though, mostly you.
Il était trop très cool pour moi, but he was into my lines
on overdosing and plastic razors. Or the: It was the year
I took a break  from the living, and I received no postcards.
No one sends postcards to the dead. He did a lot of drugs
and called so high after drumming some parked car’s hood.
I remember this as though it were me behind that windshield:
a whirl pool made by rain and blue Exxon lights. His palms
were the dropped coins breaking a splash all around.

Michelle Askin’s work has appeared in Pank, 2River View, The Oyez Review, Sierra Nevada Review, Obsessed With Pipework, Monkey Puzzle, Sub-Lit, and elsewhere.