not ever new york city

where were you this weekend?
my landlord's face gets ugly when i say
n-y-c
he's not alone in that, we all have our reasons
for instance: the combined smell of hamburgers and cigarettes
july sweating at three a.m. waiting for the j train
bottles of urine on the subway and the street
people under blankets on the street next to people in suits
the way a hurricane can kill a coastline
while one mile inland, all anyone does is drink
but cody gets uglier than that
his big lips dropping down like melpomene
ugly at the sound of ghosts and gay bars
he says "new years eve, 1983
is when he let a guy fuck him in the bath house
and i knew."

never mind that nobody could have known.
some places are so full of ghosts
that it doesn't matter which ones
lenape, homosexual, black
there is always something garish about discotheques on graveyards