So the second sequence I'm going to read is--
owes an obvious debt to Calvino.
And it is the title sequence of the poetry book, The Real
Enough World.
And it's about a lot of cities, thus the homage to Calvino.
And I'm going to read most of these, not all of them.
"Spider City."
"After a while, I dreamt about the Spider City.
And when I woke up in my flannel PJs, the curtain flapped open
and the sky greeted me.
Hello, Karen.
Hello, little bee, it said.
Which is when I remembered the strange webbed sky
of the Spider City and your face in the middle saying kiss me."
"Breathless City."
"Every city is a little breathless, a little
behind the times, racing to catch up, thus gasping.
That day I wore a gray suit, white gloves, 1960 or so.
Some thin man approached and offered me money
to pose in the nude.
The sun over St Patrick's Cathedral like a child's sun,
all rays around a smiling face.
And the man whose gray suit matched my own was called Ray.
Such coincidences occur in a city whose heart splits open
and two shocks.
But this happened later and I wasn't around.
Though I watched it on TV."