Entertaining What I Suspect Would Be the Joy of Anonymity

in a quiet suburb pretending
to be a blue color Midwestern city
I’m poised over this paper,
choosing to see 5th ave in the blue ink

to taste the city mice spice, scaffolds and cigars and street heckle
to greet the Indian man on the corner who sells me peaches for cheap
because I ask him about his new shoes.
He always has new shoes.

Listen to the slick sad midwestern blues:
table salt spilling off a table--imitation white niagra, slow.
slow. an exhale from the local stoner,
reefer pooling in the air around his hands
settling into his eyebrows, settling
into the pressed cement the smell of
settling, slow

settling into the red of her shirt
and the matching red of mine
the sound bites of their voices
crackling in and out of my reception
his blue cap, her sideways stare, blush, guilt, duck
this town will never be big enough
for any of us