Vanished Skyscrapers to continue the challenge.

My day two contribution to the February Poetry Mini-Challenge for Read Write Poem, since the real day two was...well...days ago. I'm still kicking myself for missing the prompt, but it was too tempting to pass up.

Lines from this poem have been taken from Elizabeth Alexander's Ars Poetica #100: I Believe, Autum Passage, Peccant, End, At the Beach, Island Number Four, Neonatology, and Fugue. I like the way this poem turned out.

Vanished Skyscrapers

I.
It only happens once.
In the days before you smile at me
I’m on a train, thinking about my friends.
Recalling every misbegotten everything, lamenting, repenting.
Though I do not know what I took, I know I took something
In the details, the only way
To get from here to there.

II.
The city burns. We have to stay at home
where all I will see is the circus
as it dims, as it shrinks,
but nonetheless burns
as it turns to something else.
Emptying the proverbial pocketbook,
then everything dries and disappears

III.
You tell me knees are important, you kiss
the air that dries the mouth.
What looks to be perfect is not perfect.
I must remind you that the earth is round.
To be perfect is handmade, disturbed.
Even as it falls apart, the body
Is where we are ourselves

IV.
In my head I search for understanding,
screen for the virus, which I imagine
is not all love, love, love.
Its greens and purples
in the dirt in the corner
of the body that operates
on suffering, which is real