Multiple Choice
1. with what kind of glass does the street glitter?
a. windshield seafoam green
b. champagne flute shards
c. beer bottle, craft
d. beer bottle, domestic
e. grandmother’s china
f. a mirror
2. with what have they filled the potholes?
a. gravel
b. air
c. water
d. pavement
e. a bright orange traffic cone
f. two bright orange traffic cones
3. what textile most resembles the road?
a. corduroy
b. cotton sheets, line dried, 400 thread count
c. a handkerchief, used
d. grandmother’s quilt
e. burlap
f. Lycra stretched across someone’s tight ass
Measurements
not north on Washington after 9 pm
nor on Josephine south of Saint Charles
note the nearest exits
the distance between sea level and the row houses’ ground floor
the distance between seams in the road
the ones whose gaze would linger on your skin: count the seconds
the long oval of neutral space: how many steps, how many breaths,
to cross
the scents: calculate where each lies—
is it heavy, deep fried, congealed at your ankles, sliced
by each pedal’s rotation, written in calligraphy on a card
in an English garden
is it a lilt or a waddle
where would it curve, would it curve like a manicure or a sigh
Hierarchy
coexist bumper stickers supersede the porch talk
an old man sitting on a porch stoop supersedes coexistence
trimmed shrubbery supersedes old men
purple, yellow, and green beads supersede shrubbery
uptown supersedes the colors of Mardi Gras
daylight supersedes uptown
food trucks supersede the sun
people walking dogs supersede all
Etymology
Martin Luther King Jr.
General Pershing
Chippewa
Terpsichore
Tchoupitoulas
Constantinople
Lopez
Loyola
Constance
Simon Bolivar
Fourth
Land Marks
look for the ghost bike, look white and
skeletal, look for its frame yoked to the street
sign with a thick, linked chain and a padlock’s thick, curved shank,
look both ways before,
look, here
if you peel away a layer of house paint what was written
in the X’s quadrants?
where the bike lane ends
where the beads hang
where iron fences a window
where iron fences a balcony
where the trolley stops
where the man shouts across the street that he didn’t go to the DMV
yesterday because he was too drunk
where this man is white
where the croissant is buttery
where some gather where others loiter,
is there a sign on the telephone pole at the intersection that says,
in purple handwritten capital letters, love?
