by John Van Pelt.
There’s always red, double-deckers resolved from fog and granite,
the boy’s glasses blearing city lights in slashes of impasto,
no holiday cheer but reaches his ears in a sodden frenzy,
clots of pleasantries pinched off by tinkling bells,
muted all beneath the threadbare coverlet of incessant rain.
He’s late to a party for some cousin twice-removed, but the specter
of brollies massed and dripping in someone else’s hallway and
roving children with opaque customs and smelling of wet wool
nails him in place while a knot arisen to his breastbone urges flight.
Everything that confuses – the game of musical chairs, a certain
way of being happy that is expected – begets a dislocation:
again behind the starting line, again London, again night,
the walk signal ticking down, his shoes soaked through.