Aubade at the City of Change
Aldo Amparán
In this city,
each door I cross
in search of your room

grows darker
than the sky, this silver
dome of morning spread

across the urban smog.
Country dark washes the city
light off the outskirts

& beyond

where you sleep in hiding,
where your face
wrapped in gauze

shines like sequin
in the lingering moon-drizzle.
I reach for you

at the corners of the clubs,
inside motel rooms,

where rent boys tumble
perspired bedsheets,
doubling you, your maleness

discharged,
your hip bones sticking
to my thighs, hard

stubble of your legs
scratching. The night I followed
a strange road, looking

to forget all this, starlight
spooled the gravel ribbon
leading back to the city

behind me, back
to the hospital room
where I last saw you—

tonight, I'll rest
on this road. I'll look back
to the city of change

where one year
two skyscrapers lifted, a park
shed trees

for new thoroughfares,
& an old cinema
erupted to rebuild itself

in its place. I'll stay
on the pavement,
suspended in time

like the broken sign announcing
You are entering , (a name

changed two years ago),
& I'll wonder
if the hot breeze

blowing the nape
of my neck
is your unchanged

breath rising like candle
smoke from the city.
from the book BROTHER SLEEP / Alice James Books
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"I don’t believe in prescriptions about writing. A poet is challenged, with every poem, to say what needs to be said—some may deem that dynamic political, since truth-telling and authentic questioning, two of poetry’s paramount tasks, are inherently political. Rukeyser and Rich have been major influences since the start of my writing career." 

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