Woodward Avenue
Standing with my face
pressed against the window
a floor above the street
so close to the curtain
I can see through
its synthetic material
sour with dust stench
and sweat of our sleep
bedded in this room
that’s meant for it.
Hard sleet ticks like
tiny pebbles on the sill
and aluminum siding
as I watch an older man
in pajama bottoms, Crocs
and Goose Island parka
walk his white pitbull
stopped to shit between
the parked cars, one
of which is a Ford
Econoline panel van
that looks to be about
from the late ‘90s.
I guess I see it
so often I don’t really
register it as being there
parked on the block
every day. Body panels
covered with bubble graf
or quick tags. Perforations
in the sheet metal sides
as if someone jammed rebar
or hammered the walls
from the inside out.
Streams of rust where
the paint’s cracked
at the tip — abused van
runner’s nipple.
Front fascia ripped off
and hood a different color
with clear coat peeling
in the daylight — the other
it came from, a donor van
I can only imagine was
scrapped years ago.
That Ford left the line
over a decade after
my own delivery
though it is so that
of the two of us
I’m the one who gets
to think himself
still young.