“Bait Stations”

Lawrence Giffin

October 2020–February 2021

A sycamore’s yellow
leaves hang over
the oddball’s shrine of broken toys.
Hot pink graffiti on a dumpster reads “ouch.”
Runoff on black casements stains
the rehabilitation center’s
brown bricks. Green algae tints
a trough where tree roots tilt
two sidewalk slabs together.
Nearby, cryptic utility sigils
conjure nothing.
No light spills from windows
under a funeral parlor’s
gothic-lettered sign.

*

Now and then along the street
the sharp crack of an acorn
on a car roof rings out.
The moon dissolves
in the sky like
late snow. Skyward drags
the machine its sound.
A cold gust tugs at
trashbags, nudges the guts
of a torn trash bag.
Sickly licorice-like fumes
surround the residential facility.
From the exit door’s wire glass
eyes peer out at nothing much.

*

An immense crane rests
folded in half
like an animal at its trough.
Sharp slant of the late
autumn sun warms
muted beige rows of limestones.
Tattered remnant of a
yellow Moshiach flag
hangs from a pole.
Spent scratchies
tumble among leaves.

*

A draft disturbs some tinsel hung
in the window of the hardware store.
A sun ray glints off a discarded
water bottle’s yellow piss.
Through the chain link of the easement
underneath the train tracks dry weeds spill.
Zip tied to light poles,
yellow plastic yard signs with
“cash for diabetic strips”
scrawled in sharpie shake
as the wind rises and dies down.

*

A gray door shuts. In shade
the street darkens. The words
Jeff’s Express LLC
are printed on a sign.
Shadows creep up the front
of the dialysis center.
In the twilight sky behind
the 99¢ store’s still-unlit sign
burns,
like hesperus,
a crane’s red warning light.

*

Green the flattened
pack of Newports,
green the pack of Kools.
Along a building’s ledges
dish antennas roost
black against the dusk.
Golden drifts of fallen ash
leaves lie. Light leaks out the sky.
A security light’s motion sensor
registers a presence.
Night as empty
as the wish to forget,
as a paper bag
wet with blue paint.

*

Fog hides the crane’s tip
its red light slowly breathing.
Among the leaves
tiny plastic bottles sit
like fallen fruit.
Grease stains the sidewalk
in front of a church.
Around a construction site
blue plywood sags.
Shattered safety glass
sparkles green under the
street lamp. A deli’s
LED marquee silently scrolls.
It says, “Ciggerettes.”

*

Through bus windows
faces preemptively empty themselves.
Someone looks up at an ad for a law firm.
Window LEDs of Tony’s Deli
cycle through a saccharine rainbow.
Clinging to makeshift wooden benches
vinyl stickers with red letters,
black in streetlamp light,
“We buy houses. We pay cash.”

*

Autumn’s evening
air is shatterproof.
Above the unlit coworking space,
starfield of some skeletal
highrise shimmers.
Shutters wail like cataracts.
A glass bottle
only shatters.
A child
who spent the day in pleasure’s
endless resurrection sleeps.
A lamp by the window,
a radiator pipe
clinking indecipherably.
99¢ ATM $10 Bills.