Available at Chapters.com Animal Life in Bucharest: Poems _______ For more Poets

John Degen shimmer & disappear you are the girl who drifts in and out of my city in London, you confess virginity on the lower of two bus levels; you laugh through three films inarow drinking cider from a tin in New York, you never leave the bridges, any of them, all of them; a river wind pushes through your curls – you are traffic Toronto is a seat beneath olive trees in the spring, for you and all the men who make characters of you and at the western edge, in the unnameable southwest, you run out into desert, hoping the heat will flatten you to nothing pendrith mini variety Paul leaves his Christmas lights lit through February, and parks at a slant to amuse his wife there are alleyways that can turn this city into a seaport – masts and flagpoles from the baseball standards in Christie Pits; fish in mist and funk without a living room, the corner house couple watch television in racks of potato chips and several coolers; not close enough to touch, but together and waiting to be interrupted in the event of deliberate catastrophe, their small store would continue three days or less, and Paul would drive past it, on his way to the countryside to release his cats