That government cheese, that awkward 
We can still be friends, never good, 
made worse with my need to ask,
“So this is mutual, right?”
A rough seven hours with no A/C 
from Durham, NC, to New Hope, PA, 
and Laurel has offered the extra bed, 
but I slog another two hours north, 
crash beside the empty clothes hamper 
in my cousin’s guest room in Wayne, NJ. 

So there I am the following day, late 
to brunch in Rye, NY, crawling 
over the Hudson in classic traffic:
nine Jersey lanes meat-ground 
to a four-lane gauntlet called the GWB. 
Idiot light flashes HOT with every full stop, 
radiator cap’s itching to blow green
caterpillar juice through the grill
and I’m there roughing up the radio knob, 
cursing the sun, hammering the roof 
with my fist like a bitter chimp. 

And later that night, the point of this trip, 
an Upper East Side post-nup 
for friends who got hitched in Seattle, WA: 
hard to believe but Laurel’s here too, 
drove up solo through the heat 
in a car I can’t now fathom. 
Inside the place it’s all horror.
Outside, I’m leaning on a worn rail 
over the East River, this liquid bad breath, 
this indiscriminate New York soup. 
A cantaloupe spins past, and Styrofoam cups, 
diapers, torn sides of rotting fish that graze 
the concrete rip-rap lining the riverbank. 
Lights from Astoria, Roosevelt Island play 
mild havoc on the water, on whatever 
Chump-Elect gets caught in the vicinity. 

But their effect on me is somehow sensuous, 
the river’s besparkled muteness a proposition,
its call counter to that looming wallflower fate, 
that endless vigil spent perched upon the rim 
of what Corso called “the bath of life.” 
Behind me, a door opens. Big Band horns 
dizzy the night air. Someone leans halfway out: 
“Hey there, pal—thinking of diving in?”