lou verga: ‘work -> home’

work -> home

she says the words but forgets what they mean

stop looking at me please

these mice that squeal inside the cracks,

these mice like spinach leaves wilting in the heat,

like drowned teabags with misshapen strings

on a thirtieth-floor commission-flat balcony

an olive tree outgrows its fourth pot this month

and in the gravel the glass of a broken bottle

shines like hematite under the moon

outside an empty pub where a grandfather eats his moustache

a woman sleeps in your bed,

her shoulderblade is an overcast sky,

her hair is a dark stream

it falls on the carpet, then ripples and splays

she swivels around but she has no face

a riderless bike slinks up the side of a house

the stars gather between the powerlines

and nothing’s what you think it is

in the afternoon a man with a blank expression

walks backwards and wheels his vespa

a trail of pink ice cream spreads down the footpath,

a blue virgin mary stands in an electric box

on someone’s abandoned front porch,

but your eyes are too heavy to support

so with tweezers you pry them open,

wide as the crack of light that dislocates itself

between the window and the blinds,

like the mice, and sometimes, under the cluttered street signs

that scramble into blank, a body walks stuck in its mind

and its ghost lags in the space behind

it longs for the endless sea. fleeting love,

would you please stop looking at me

lou verga