Keeping in Touch
Wired ears, in the subway, on the street.
Mine are not wired. It is 8 P.M
Three yards short of my home corner,
I overhear: “Do you know what I need?
I want the skinniest, the youngest girl.
You got anything like this?”
Glancing to the side, I make out, his ear
to a smartphone, shadowed in a doorway,
a large, bulky man in an overcoat.
No native speaker would repeat the “the,”
is my second thought. First is the inkling
that, with wired ears, “Cosi Fan Tutte”
might have preempted the picture in my mind:
A child of twelve handcuffed to a bedpost.
My last awareness is of the dark.
Central Casting? Not at this time of night.