The eyes open to the cry
of my neighbor,
who is loudly having sex.
Her emphatic
affirmative
sprays my own sheets damp,
glares against
my bedroom mirror,
drags it fingertips
down my shins.
Then I am standing,
wavering as her breath.
I spread my curtains
to let enter the brush
of each passing car
the slow chrome
of handlebars
and rippling spokes,
the chime of last night’s
bottles and aluminum cans
and the window-box
of cigarettes and marigolds
and the tree in its planter,
bursting the sidewalk
on a which a whisking push broom
seems to whisper
yes, yes, yes.
Michael Pontacoloni’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Barrow Street, Shampoo, Flyway, and elsewhere. He is a student in the MFA program at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.