In the Evening, Neatly

Claire Becker

00:00 / 00:00

Somebody wants to be like me
and I want to be somebody better.
We all want to be with someone
smarter and it’s possible

we’re all somebody’s mother.
He dumps the bag of trash
and looks for food in it.
We kick around the wrapper.

24th street’s not like the radio—
the radio’s an abstraction.
The street has the traction,
the trash station, the truth

we’re all somebody’s mother.
We give a dumb thing
to teenagers. Belabor.
I scissor the intersection.

A person, a car. We peek at each
other. We don’t and we do
want to run each other over.

I'd walk on a car, bike on

that hair, drive into the ambulance.
We cross each other to see
who we are.
We put our hands together.

We’re older; we’re the same.
Our hands take us,
keep us somewhere.
It makes us better.