Poetry; Castillo Cultural
Press, New York, NY,
1991, $4.95.

A Reading Sample (Collected in Eros in Sanskrit)

She Walks on Water Street
after a line by Sappho

Artfully adorned Aphrodite wanders alone along old cobblestone under Brooklyn Bridge lights to comb deserted haunts of Manhattan at the edge of evening. However pedestrian, every solitude means to confront loss.
Should she dissolve into nightfall’s first star with the ease of an odalisque undressing above her lover’s bed, would we suspect desire & destiny already one? Should she peer into storefronts whose garments afford a reflection of herself through plate glass & neon, would she cry out among mannequins don’t abandon me?

Should she discover in what smoke & mirrors make the wealth in wanting nothing, would even her isolation prove illusion, something to step through, toward a fourth dimension, that extra axis fashion never spins---not to get into, but out of, oneself. Should a city appear whose avenues were love’s own arteries, would walking away from ourselves seam even contradictions like children not yet born carry the souls of ancestors dead.

Should she push past dusty daylight’s indigo end to your match meeting her cigarette, would her exhale dissolve your reflection, pulling you out of yourself---isn’t that what Venus rising over bridge lights already foretells?