Paint left, humidity purgatory,
Sticky but practically peeled off, while
Water and lime, the kind you hear about
On infomercials promising to rid
You of Built Up ****, is trapped between the
Panes they said they replaced but I don’t know.
Clothes piled with invisible coatings of
Dust from the floor last swept ten years ago,
And sweat from leaving the AC off
(Because saving a few bucks is worth it),
And sweat in stained dresses when you touched me,
And sweat in damp briefs when I touched myself.
Paper stacks, three years, busy work
And scholastic articles I should
Have read, say I will, but won’t pick up,
And verses I wrote that go nowhere but
Here and to a real poet, happily
Trapped at an average liberal arts college.
So instead of dressing or cleaning I
Call you, naked, a fattened odalisque,
Silent for hours, my thin mouth, a suture.
A fit black girl cut across the dog park,
She saw my bare shoulders, sloped pudgy pale,
We gazed in the other’s faces, but now
I can’t think what she wore, and she knows
I’m just sad, still: a ghost in the windows.