Aubade at the City of Change
By Aldo Amparán
In this city
each door I cross
in search of your room
grows darker
than the sky, this silver
dome of morning spread
across the urban smog.
Country dark washes the city
light off the outskirts
& beyond
where you sleep in hiding,
where your face
wrapped in gauze
shines like sequin
in the lingering moon-drizzle.
I reach for you
at the corners of the clubs,
inside motel rooms,
where rent boys tumble
perspired bed sheets,
doubling you, your maleness
discharged,
your hipbones sticking
to my thighs, hard
stubble of your legs
scratching. The night I followed
a strange road, looking
to forget all this, starlight
spooled the gravel ribbon
leading back to the city
behind me, back
to the hospital room
where I last saw you—
Tonight, I’ll rest
on this road, I’ll look back
to the city of change
where one year
two skyscrapers lifted, a park
shed trees
for new thoroughfares,
& an old cinema
erupted to rebuild itself
in its place. I’ll stay
on the pavement,
suspended in time
like the broken sign announcing
You are entering ______, (a name
changed two years ago),
& I’ll wonder
if the hot breeze
blowing the nape
of my neck
is your unchanged
breath rising like candle
smoke from the city.
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"I came to think of mourning as liminal space. How the loss of a departed loved one, or the loss a lover who walks out, places you in a kind of limbo," Amparán told Poets.org. "How time changes you, how you refuse the change, strands you in that border of mourning, like the griever in this poem."
Thursday was much cooler than Wednesday but still nice out. I did a bunch of stuff I had to get done in the morning, but it was too nice not to be outside so I walked, then I walked again later with Paul after his phone conferences, and I got to talk to Alice for a long time.
We watched Coming to America so we can watch the sequel on Friday -- parts of it have not aged well but the cast is great and it's nostalgic in a good way. Then we finished catching up on Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist, which feels more dated! Flowers at Green Spring Gardens:
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