how do you do it

how do you do it

just like you, baby, just like you.

Up, there.
Gutted row homes lined side to side,
holes in brick we can see through
to the vacant lot behind.
Inside she crawls over recycled
mattresses edge to edge to find
the one, the soft padded featherbed
that does not belong

here

among exposed springs, mold and cigarette burns.
Crayon stubs from a last day scavenge
mark the waterstained drywall like
cave painting history. She colors in
alley way gemstones of colored glass that fall
through cracks in recycling trucks,
the spectrum of Thursday's produce stand,
rainbows in both oil slick puddles and windshield
cracks in the abandoned Buick.

We stack the bricks with mud for mortar,
walling off our place from the crack head wanderers
thinking this must be a place they can get something.

Something beyond colored glass triangles
embedded deep in the grooves
between brick.

We do not ask where they came from,
we do not question the Belgian fountains
that have appeared in the square,
or the vapor of the sidewalk that still rises
after the night of fires leaving
melted tar, shattered windows.

No one moves when the loud speakers warn
incoming train track two.
We know it is magic,
we know not to doubt,
we are invincible.

Don’t ask me how I do it,
you say.

Lets not question sunrise or springtime,
or the prize at the bottom of the box.
Just shake it, baby,
see what rises to the top.