Dave, the tattoo artist at 454, claims a woman inked faster,
faster on either ass cheek, as if her desire seeped
through, drab and dispensable like Christmas in the mall
or Sex Pistols anarchy.
Lo siento, Mark.
In The New Yorker or The Times, I
forget which, paraphrased, now that the city's
has become one gigantic mall, remember when you said,
how do you move your hips like that?
I'll never forget it.
Once, during sex to be kinky, I said,
the original Starbucks logo is a double-tailed mermaid
spreading herself for sailors.
There's sex everywhere in America but in sex.
That's not my line.
I'm paraphrasing, but I don't remember whom.
I heard whom is a dying word.
I copied Joan Didion.
I titled a folder 'notes toward question mark'
and in it, wrote, a sense that America is shattered."
"Walt Whitman's America."