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Talking to a Spider Plant
in the Kitchen
You give us 22 minutes,
we'll give you the world.
-1010 WINS news radio slogan
Rather than attempt to describe the Hallmark
Christmas carousel, the one with a pine base
and four gold horses, each tied to the center pole
with a red silk ribbon, rather than explain
why I didn't mail the letter on the counter,
I wondered how cold it was outside,
if I had to wear my long, black coat,
the one bought at a street fair on 30th
for fifteen dollars, a rip in the steam stitched
back twice the last two winters by the same hand,
Gormley, who moved from a railroad flat on E83rd
to Elizabeth, New Jersey, leaving behind
a landlord who lived two of his past
lives in New York, the first one in 1888
on Woodbine between Broadway and Bushwick,
buried under twenty one inches of snow
for fourteen days before the drift came undone.
He planned to leave Manhattan this way: burned,
tossed 110 floors above the copper bull
standing in front of Bowling Green,
a bit of ash slipping into a taxi on Vesey
stopped for two women, one shirt white,
one angel green, holding up northbound
traffic for five of the 22 minutes exchanged for the world.
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