I READ THAT AND WEPT

in the farthest dusty aisles
of the last antiquarian bookseller
in all of New York,
I pull down a cob-webbed poetry volume
from the highest shelf,
slowly turn its yellowed,
crumbling pages

in a light barely bright enough
to see,
I read words
untouched by human eyes
in over fifty years

not good poetry
but the last poetry

and I am witness,
the last witness,
in rotting flesh
and withered clothes

as the bookseller closes up
for the very last time

and a giant wrecking ball
sways menacingly
above the shuttered store

and not the last wrecking ball
either

MECONIUM

I’m here to explain
how something that came
from nothing didn’t

but merely filled
in the outline,
gave flesh to the shadows
that were already here.

I am this so-called expert
on the human meconium,

that wretched blob,
green and gray,
the imposition you can’t avoid

when tangled up in love.
All I can say is that

inside you is a pebble
like a bear inside a cave,

that’s intrinsic to
the running blankness of birth –

meconium
meconium
meconium

the body can’t begin,
until the body’s properly finished