for ioan flora

store windows in which I can see you as a blur–
the animals make way for me to kiss the glass.
you’re deaf as a log
I ask myself why you ever came here
to cry over the human race.

my armful of roses
smears red into the sky.
I worry my dress will snag
on a thorn.

shouldn’t it have taken place in an oyster?
in a snail?

or in freight cars where
cattle wait without water?

you’d rather be eating chicken livers
with onion
and drink a cold beer,
to enjoy yourself
while elsewhere a woman gives birth.

someone promised me
a womb
to give you birth
as if from a glass barrel.