Things We See

my bedsheets with

his lover's blood--another way of saying

these small things between us

could be art--you never know

like the guy in the alley offering hash

or the birdlike hookers

on 700-year-old concrete

looking through us--do they see?

Anything we might have learned

passing forward in time, the dark Atlantic

bleeding--I don't remember if I slept

but it's tomorrow. In a seashell

indigenous to the Costa Brava, all of human time

is recorded in the third curve, but it's

cruel and unintelligible.

.

After all this, and the Columbian Exchange,

Barcelona

provides a feast: smoked ham and oysters

astride wrought-iron gates

and exceptionally gaudy nude figures.