(revised)

Streets, red lines
in the whites of your eyes.

Street where in 1911
Olof, the carpetmill foreman, choked
to death a seamstress with his free hand
behind a Warburton Ave. barn.
The next morning they found him
gulping milk from a bottle
on a Bear Mountain slope.

Streets like pieces of broken scaffolding
hanging from a skyscraper
after the mind gets what’s coming to it
for climbing too high.

Street lined with trees
on which a child burns her hand
in a rag-pile fire while off to the side
a pagoda door swings open and tiny bells ring.

Streets leading, every day,
to the same jar of horseradish
spooned clean by an immigrant
who never learned to smile brightly
like Dr. Reiniger, the dentist, said he should.

Street on which children rollerskate
in and out of every sex wish your mama ever had.

Street where paper violets
are placed on dead a gardener’s grave.

Street where you live,
street at the end of which everything ends
when you finally open your eyes.