The Loneliness Jacket
THE LONELINESS JACKET
You wear it and it snows: tracks
empty the park outside the museum.
A promo pen blues
your breast-pocket lining, and a snag starts to pull
at your sleeve. "Last one left
is as good as extinction." So says the quote
on the leaking plastic. But someone's pinkie shined of wax
on this second-hand tweed
flecks the lapel with an old, cleared hearing--
conversation recorded in a stain.
You button up and listen in
for this snow is like talk in the sign-language trees
a thing you name, and the name sticks,
windows lighting up in the dinosaur wing.