NY1

Walked home with a mouthful of secondhand smoke, peering in at happy hour strangers. Two Latina girls ascended the Union Square subway stairs in front of me, both instinctively hiking their tailbone belt-loops, holding them up all the way to the top of the flight. George Bush's doppelganger was buying spinach. I know exactly how many inches of snow will fall on Friday. New York One didn't say a word about the earthquake. The content of the postcard has been revised three times since last night, when I woke up and penned it into the penultimate page of On The Road in the post bedtime darkness. I am on the last dregs of that Bic pen I lifted from the bookstore, and can't seem to find its kind anywhere else, for love or money. Sixty dollars in my wallet. A day's wages. One hundred or so pages from the end.