BQE

To give up a lifetime goal
(he cannot) he moved to an old factory
atop the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
Every evening by a window he watches
headllights repeat dusk to dark codes,
a glow green sign, a wide van wiggle.
A Polish church needle repairs haze.

He learned a mantra to tug the tune
earth's wobble emits. He chants
from shock and imagines he can quit.
He knew before he cherished the lease
the room had held industries and all
failed. Above a cat he bathes naked
met by the dark and glow of the BQE.

Ambition bent his acute arrow
more than failure. Light echoes
when hesitation slams breaks together,
road tuned to a helicopter, stalled.
Defeat's power humiliates important
habits he never dared confess. Life
ahead notices when idled, least able,
it moves, evening's glow a trophy hung
faintly as he drags fate's route
along a planet bound by the BQE.

Shifts

"All I do sit naked
and think of him" the model
smiles then drops eyebrows,
odd to talk to anyone
who likes her former lover.
Survival adjusted, tired
of taking him on and off,
she can't annul for life
her womanhood. "There might
be a letter. No. He's ridden
by the new flame. He won't
admit he tires of her."

The art class teaches boredom
how to copy her. Fresh mixed
and dabbed, she can't weaken
when no stich acknowledges.
"I must be here and deaden
each nerve for pain to find
a wide pool in me and drown.
I pose to have money, Mexico
a long flight and he won't
invite me. I shake, hunger
not what the body wanted.
I could go back to Basel,
my mountain cows and log.
I work at not moving: a New
York power of hot ambition."

-- Nathan Whiting