The Terms

For the past nine months
I have shared my body with this city:
allowed the ground’s tremors to rumble
in my chest, the skyscrapers to steal
the sun’s warmth from its rightful place
on my cheek, the heavy air to weigh
my lungs with curry, musk, and garbage.

For nine months I have incubated
in the small rooms of Harlem, Dumbo, Hell’s
Kitchen. I have relinquished my unfettered
right to the sky, accepting the airshaft
and a stolen Central Park afternoon as enough.
I have learned that no space is mine alone.

In the springtime, expecting to come to term
as the perennial flowers do, I found no change.
No great labor to render my body my own again.
No epiphanous pain that ends in joy,
No sudden, primitive love for her.

So I boarded a red bus like a tourist.
The second story retold the city's face
as that of smirking gargoyles, stained
glass jubilation, and proud topless mermaids.

Why did she never reveal herself to me
when I came offering full devotion of body
and mind to the Bacchus temple of her boroughs?

Today I checked my map often and thought,
I am a stranger in a strange land.

This city answered, now we can begin.