What Passes By The Starbucks Window

                Park Avenue, near Grand Central Station

Long curly hair,
the kind I like
to imagine

falling forward
over my face
as the woman

on top of me
descends to flick
her tongue across

my lips; taxis;
a man in blue,
right-hand smoking,

nodding his head
at a white hat
hands-in-pockets-

nodding-back friend
before sending
the glowing butt

into the street.
Not you. Not you.
White umbrella

keeping a Black
woman’s face dry;
a limousine

big as the one
I rode the night
that movie’s lead

made me her date.
Not freedom. Not
imprisonment.

Queens Surface Corp.
express bus I
could take home; steam

from the stacks
on the open
manhole cover;

an Asian girl
no more than five,
older sister,

maybe mother,
calling ahead;
yellow suitcase

left at the curb.
Nothing I want.
Nothing I don’t.