A seam in the city learns to breathe —\nits metal mouth widening for noon,\nclosing for night, clicking like cutlery\nin the apartment above mine.\n\nI drop a wish between the teeth,\nwait for the river to rinse it of accent.\nAll day the bridge forgets and remembers\nhow to be itself without cracking.\n\nOn the far bank a man shakes out a tarp.\nIt becomes weather.

Between floors we practice patience —\nbuttons soften from use, a tiny planetarium\nof thumb prints. Someone coughs a calendar.\n\nThe panel hums in institutional C.\nI can hear the building thinking: down, up,\nthen the risky middle where names live.\n\nWhen the doors finally admit their error,\nwe step out the way rain steps into gutters —\nsudden, with purpose, already leaving.

Moths rehearse the oldest rumor\nin a hot orange dialect. The curb\nsmells like old coins and summer.\n\nI inventory the quiet: one truck,\nthree windows lit on purpose,\na dog translating the block to itself.\n\nWhen the lamp buzzes out, nothing changes\nexcept what we pretend to see.

The painted arrows are tired of deciding.\nWe park diagonally into the day, crooked\nas apologies. The asphalt gives back a heat\nthat remembers everything.\n\nA shopping cart clicks its teeth,\ntrying to learn the grammar of wind.

— 2004: July, August, September, October

“Poetry of Concrete” is a curb-level journal by an unnamed walker.\nPosted on lunch breaks and late trains. Built with stubborn HTML,\nkept gray on purpose. If you wish to say hello, scratch your initials\ninto the comment box of the sky.