Concrete playgrounds, auto body shops.
Empty benches echo laps, mothers’ pathos.

Words leap off a boy’s shirt, MAÑANA ALBANIA
as he strolls by with his grandmother ...

BOCA RATON, BROOKLYN
a restaurant replies. It segues into a botanica.

Madrassa on this corner, kielbasa on that.
“Smashed china” to illustrate consonants

Russian rams together. On a berm in the sun
a library book tells how Borges and Burgess,

meeting for the first time at a cocktail party
realizing spies were everywhere, began to converse

haltingly in Old English. Butchering it, even
at the archaic convergence of cow and queen.