ImaginaryDeath Certificates in

Imaginary Death Certificates in Chain-Link Fenced Back Yards

Forthe cornershrines &the Schuylkillfisherman lures lured that girl who looked like Susan at the Arcade asking for just enough to buy a cheesesteak hoagie

Rain on the Liberty Bell pierced punk boys smoking menthols outside Zipperhead she scored a bag an elegy in a chain-link fenced back yard she was glass light morphine’s lost fugue her mouth rouged &rough as arefinery forgive me the Susquehanna & Scranton Susan at the bus station on her way to Camden to visit Walt Whitman’s grave decades you tried to believe she was not

sold to a pimp in West Philly she was pale as peonies she in hercutoffjeans green haltertop she with her spiral notebooks her knapsack of pens her gear

She was white as aspirin she nodded the way a lamb bends its neck to drink water she was sipping glass light at the all-night laundromat sipping some ghost language the color of chrysanthemums some witness somebody to blame she was never hungry as hereyelids fluttered blue butterflies heronlypallbearers some name pawn shopped in plain sight Walt Whitman

how many have disappeared in your beard?