Saturday

It’s a cool night of finished serpentines
around the city. I’ve turned things down

to hear what the crickets
are thinking about September

with their bodies. “Tone down
your stridulation,” someone’s

September body tells me.
The stars are baking poems,

but many of them come out
half-baked and gooey. Still,

you want to lick them
off your fingers like the past

which is actually growing,
not shrinking, as it is rumored

by people who are propagandists
for the present tense. Do the crickets

note their present tense is slowing down?
I listen to the sounds of bodies

made of night and its promises,
which are lovely misleadings

like certain streets you love best
at 4 a.m. because all the doors

shine bright as the moon.