Dusk

Smokestack dusk dance,                            the swing shift from the metallurgy plant 

smoking on break in the dusk,                   near the empty laundry mat 

where I wash the dusk from my clothes,   where the old women weave 

the last strands of dusk                               with their fingers, Fate 

fettered dusk, through the open doors      of corner bars when men drink 

their dusk on ice, raise em high                 in blue tinged light. 

The gloaming the Irish call it,                     the time between, when the ghost riders 

grieve the grail,                                          when the open hearted 

hear the hymns                                         of those hands that held the light 

and let it spill. My father at night,               his glass of dusk, the work day dust 

in the palm of his hand.                             My mother danced alone in the dusk, 

in a corner room with red brick walls,       with headphones on, spinning 

with her arms outstretched, the dusk       of regret like flashbulbs 

never quite learned. Pocket dusk             to turn out on the bureau before bed, 

and the dusk falls across Chinatown,        gathered in the jars of herbs, 

ground tiger balls and rhino horn,             the dusk of tusk toothed pachyderms, 

of plumage like dusk, on hats                   behind glass in the textile museums, 

bird song dusk. Down the block               someone is cursing someone 

out in the dusk, as if they cannot             hear the light entering their bodies, 

their limbs catching starlight,                   red-light, green light— the children run 

reaching through the dusk.                      So much sadness in the dusk 

of open windows where women lean     over the flower potted ledges, 

so much of what is sweet.                       Children eat the dusk 

in long tongues of letters                        they scrawl in chalk 

on the sidewalk. Cats meow                   and hiss the dusk, mew the dusk 

as the lights of windows click on            and the fireflies rise through the trees, 

I fold my clothes as if my hands              are praying, forgetting, praying 

and forgetting for those people              I love who live so distant from me, 

whom the dusk has long set on,              for whom the dusk is yet to come. 

In between houses a radio plays,            a tender pop song, a dog howls. 

The dryer spins, as the men                   smoke in the near dark 

outside the factory—                              now turning black blue, 

like a dusk colored bruise                       on one’s forearm 

where he dropped a piece of sheet metal, he blows his smoke, 

the gravity of dusk,                                 at the CITGO entering the Slurpee machine, 

on the sneakers of boys                         who sit on the curb, sharpening a knife. 

Dusk is the last paycheck.                      Our probation before night.