Nick Leverknight

Nine o’clock, Eastern Standard

Warm to a fault, I read Proust

in a bus stop. The woman beside me

has one tooth, and the bench

we share is rigidly cold, so I spread

fifty cent newspaper for her to sit on.

The bus arrives, and as we board,

she turns rheumatically, asking for nickels, but

all I can give her is a dime’s worth of grapes.

A rush of blood chokes me, a wind that could

expand and explode

the arteries supplying my brain