The Last Report from the Underground

Cold moonlight poured like water 

through cracks in the widows; winter

broke the locks and barged in, banging

up the stairs in hard shoes—it was always

winter on East 10th Street. Rain on St. Marks,

 

rainy days on the crosstown bus to nowhere

The Vietnam days. I was a girl when girls

knew nothing, when all the boys looked like

the Jesus kind: black eyeliner, black coffee,

black hearts, because that’s what we liked 

then, when our own hearts were broken

 

Rumors reached us that troubadours had moved 

into the Chelsea Hotel so we flew downtown, 

chewing on the ends of our hair. For years, 

we waited for a message but the news from

the prairies never reached us; the papers we

read were already damaged by conversion therapy

 

and we wouldn’t have believed them anyway—

no one ages in troubled times. No one ever ages

when they walk the streets. Overhead, the sky

kept building itself out of blocks of sun and

clouds and shadows: we stood on the rooftops

and howled at them to come closer and 

I think now, that perhaps they finally did

 

But that’s not the end of the story—

this is: the last report from the underground

was riddled with bullets. The last time

the East Coast was heard from 

it had already crossed the border 

but rumor has it that any day now, 

it will confess to how and when and why