Transaction

The heat makes everything more real:

the sweats are sweatier today;

the stark dark hairs are hairier,

the fats more lipid, more opaque,

and through leftover water drops,

the seeing sun steams oil from us:

humanity is raised at last,

a rich exchange to swap for sun.

The sweat, the hair, the fat, the waste—

and age beats down like summer heat,

the sun made redder by the breaths

of human thousands, damp beneath.

I turn my face against my sleeve

and breathe the smoke my sleeve has caught,

which we were given lives ago

in sharp defiance of the gods.

Animī

I see you, sometimes, in a face,
in young men hurrying with tasks
or pushing through the crowd in pairs,
too vivid for me and too fast.

You dart across their irises
and through the muscles of their cheeks;
I hear you echo when they laugh,
ineptly hidden, out of reach.

How many of us have you passed
without a touch, without a word?
We’ll never find out what it’s like
to be these men, intense, secure—

but even they can’t see the homes
you build and vacate in their eyes:
we never know about ourselves
until you’ve left us way behind.