no words of longing could express this nag
of memory scratching at my skull like
three white mice trying to claw their way out
and these bits of bone floating in my brain
pickled in thirty years’ wine and whiskey
all swirling like snow in a globe of some
city to which I’ve never been but in youth
earnestly desired to visit . . . all this
to distract from the loveliness she stole
not from me—that would count no loss—but from
herself, robbed by vice of pissing virtue
into the alley pavement and taking bribes
from all the punters pounding away her
dignity for the sake of an hourly bump.

dmpitchford