Thank you for the night being over

for I am afraid to go out alone

at a certain hour but would not

go out then but alone

the glass that crumbles in the corner

of the cement stoop - once there

was marble there I think - as if someone

said we must take all our bottles there

and smash them so she will see

them and think of the night.

the whores who are fat on this block -

I am thrilled to call them whores

though I was not raised that way -

and now they are gone home

thanking perhaps the night

for going.

further up I saw a whore one morning

crouch behind a car at the approach

of a cop, but the cop turned before he

reached her so I said he turned up there

and the whore came out again.

the corner store which is Available

whose glass like water streaks and swims.

I like the empty scraps that remain

on the floor of a store where I have shopped.

the wall which is red, pinned,

pricked and scratched

and the wall which is yellow with strips of pasted

poster they could not get off.

- but not

for those who keep the kids from putting

up their rock band papers, with names which

are good like Sex in Violets and Burn Witch

Burn. They have nothing to do with the whores.

But even if they did.

Thank you for the night being over

and the morning that flies

down from above

having already risen before I was here

and the tall white dog with

pink eyes

who is graceful

who walks careless or careful around the glass.

- Daisy Fried