the polo-clad lad, like a 

polyp unpinned in the
bowels of the brutalist
hilton, braces his
 
back against lamplight 
batting back sun beams, 
sun beams barreling
brusque as a trebucheted 
I-beam, smiling in shyly trepanning 
osiris, maybe, or Faceless Monsters
Montgomery grooming a khaki-clad
catamite banker’s assistant, shooting
 
off e-mails at empties, popping the
gumball fudge-gobs free from a Scub-
rats’ pastry, much as my grandfather’s 
grandfather use to chew chicken eyes,
gayly proclaiming through soot-
streaked teeth how he liked the
sound they made, (the feeling) for 
better or worse, predating the advent 
of bubble wrap. 
                               Scarcely a block
from the scattershot steam slopped
haughtily out from the hilton’s 
spryly calliopied hood vents, sprawled the 
polo-kit’s wicked antithesis, teasing a form
in his red and blue costume pa-
jamas suggesting a drowning cow
or Auðhumla confounded from licking the
very first god from the bottom-
less frost; he, flawless and flopping
as fickle and soft as a fish relents
on the log-jammed boardwalk, took to a
creamsicle traffic impediment much as a 
cat curls up on a fainting chaise lounge—neither
 
the two had met, nor should, for 
risking that rip in all riffling time
lines dare might make all the world left-
handed; yet, they secretly snicker and
seesaw, counterweights keeping the
firebrands guessing at just
which goat might go rogue next.