Slick

before christmas in the courtyard
i take my last look at the leaves
straining so hard to hang on they change color
and past me walk a man and woman holding hands
who i think i recognize, but they are everyone
in this sea, among the courtyard trees

on the train every Wednesday night
one woman in a black dress
does make up in a side seat, pocket mirror
she’s beautiful anyway but, focusing on
her lips i see her slide over the skin
like a wet snake
with precision, as construction
brightening her face, peach and black
i imagine her rubbing it off
and wonder what time she does it
and where

when I return later to the courtyard it
smells like sweet trees in the air
just after January, which means they’ve
fucked them, again, with chainsaws, as
they explained to me, a laugh in the throat:

cleaning it all up
is difficult work for us
it’s easy this way

for the sake of not raking, they hire
four men for the day, with gear, sawdust
streaming off the trunk like from
a popped garden hose, floating away
coming to rest on anything handy
the buzz of robots gobbling up the limbs,
every new year chewing the roots

on the train every Thursday night
one man in a black suit
pops open a can of malts,
sucking on it like they can’t see him,
tasting it on his tongue,
ashamed but telling himself not to be,
because this is what we want
his face blushing red from the buzz
I follow him to the station from work
and wonder where he gets off
and when

there are no leaves to clean up now, though
the branches do their best to push out,
and by the next december a couple make their way
to the surface as i go to the city
for our holidays

just january, some night at 11:30 pm
in the courtyard
as the weather gets colder
there are only the stumps of trees, reaching
for the skies like dismembered outlaws
covered in neon, demanding scarves, and
men in suits and women in dresses
straining so hard to hang on they change color