Night Walk, New Haven
She watches, not waiting for a city
‘ambassador’ (whatever that means,
the suited anyone who never cleans
Artisan street anyway, its rot-Xmas
tree of plastic bottles suffering from
shingles of fast food debris, also like
a stocking? an old branch-groping
shoe), not for an ambassador, their
city-logoed shirts hanging baggily,
unlike Yale security, vaguely other-
welcoming if you are rich girls on
a Friday night and they are paid to
escort you, no. She waits for anyone,
any able-bodied man, to shuffle her
arm-in-arm from across the street
where maybe she lives, maybe not,
to Est. Est. Est. pizza. I don’t think
I’m the only one who sees that
as overkill. She wears the same silk
undergarment, an off-pink nighty,
walks like nothing more depended
on the world than this moment resting
her weight on yours, one foot in front of another.
