vinzel

September glimpsed

through the open back of my black dress

unbuttoned, strung up

by a single wire hanger

the homemade abortionists’ kind

there’s noise through the balcony doors

city cars, in country lanes

passing the pregnant vines

with their fat roe clustered

in the lower branches,

I’ve seen nothing yet

for such a deflowered traveller

my clothes still smelling of Rome

the sweet damp dust, on everything

and my suitcase life

spread on another foreign floor

I catch a quick French conversation

car starts up and leaves the drive

with places to go, out of my life

much the same as I

left time and again

breath held and eyes slow

through a plane window,

at each city’s lights 

rested on their black beds

all my mythology shattered

about otherness and distance,

because even you

are still in the world.