Ephraim Scott Sommers

TO MYSELF AS A STATUE IN CENTRAL PARK

That cigarette smokes you down,
And you guzzle the man
Who perches at the lip of the tunnel

And unzips the air with his trumpet.
Then, the men with jackhammers appear
In coveralls, funeral-black, with dollies, paramedic-red.

You hope the coming night might blur your sex.
You watch the wooden teeth of the slave ship
Gnaw on your ankle and wrist. You watch

The procession—the straining eighteen-wheelers.
The boxed-up crane unfolds her arm
Into the evening, the construction sirens

Panting orange. Bob Dylan mumbles
From a parked car of the death
Of your father. The wrecking ball approaches.

—from Rattle #36, Winter 2011