by H. Sarah Blumenthal

Those who knew the street became the dust

Became the mud. People in the mud- piecemeal.

Everywhere, a cathedral of fingers, a city of unstrung legs.

Those who had no legs to drag

Drag with their arms, those without arms torqued

In the earth, those who  swept the streets

Died on them. Those who died in the street disassembled there 

If you run from fire, fire finds you. 

If fire finds you, it eats its full. 

Old people hinged on young mothers, on mothers on mothers.

All streets are dust. 

And all dust is made of skin