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.