Two Images of Ann Arbor
in Different Years
Ars Poetica
I once danced drunk for you in the rain, barefoot on wet road gravel. And though I did not enjoy bare feet, the rain fell in bitter patter—it was music, music of late spring, when the goddamn rain wouldn’t stop, and when every afternoon my breathing was scented gin-bright from juniper milk poured in the fragile solo cups, occasionally crushed, cut and bled my soiled feet.
I despised wet and unclean ground; however, Dendrites Dionysus was hidden in the musky wooden scent of cheaply built and old student housing, and the two of you there, Sanya and Eric, just reminded me of fig trees and grape vines and sexual organs, both the pomegranate and the phallus. And I danced, drenched on the pale Sunday, limbs burning brightly, sweating, despite feeling like strange fish submerged in the otherworldly coldness of Arctic water.
Nickels Arcade
I first arrived here as a stranger; I spoke a pidgin sounding of crushed candy wrappers amidst crackling pomegranate seeds, just like how tildes hang from verses’ edges’, unable to communicate that pregnant silence preceding spoken language.
And outside the tobacco shop, I peeled dry flaky skin from parched coffee kissed lips, sun tanned under the August sun, anxious and confused about the role I should play, whether I should step into the shop or stay pinned between this intersection of customer, spectator, and passerby, struck in front of dozens of unwatching eyes, who would soon go on living their thing, going boating at the local river.
The August sun beats down through arcade glass; I step under crusty dark hardwood frames, feeling uncertain, with no intent to buy wooden pipes hanging against the wall or ivory shaving cream carefully sealed into shining portable tin jars.
Those summer days felt like the streets leading back to my house, in anxious right angles. Each day started at the morning mirror, then kept away to distant places before returning right back to where it all began.