Number-Three son forget turn off
Hong Min’sign: slow flash-ing-ne-on- green-ar-row;
No. 3, lost in sudden reverie in his father’s dark cafe;
            in memory of the perfume of pubic hair,
            the color of early summer wheat

‘It wouldn’t have worked,’
his honored uncle wisely counseled;
but this early winter’s night, the cafe closed,
watching papers swept down Cermak,
            her face so close he could not focus,
            only hold it in his hands

the drone of the garbage truck, feeding in the frozen alley
tries to nudge him back;
and so he sighs, and looks about his father’s diner,
about his father’s business,
turns off the ne-on-ar-row,
checks the locks, and leaves,
turtling his head against the wind that’s run from Canada
and through the steel teeth of the bridge that spans the stagnant river.

He shivers in his slowly warming Silverado,
staring straight ahead
            tasting the salt of great soft tears that welled within
            those periwinkle eyes

This good son glances, just across the street
at the small and single light
in the room above the great elliptical doors
wherein the great truck and engine wait.
He can see the chief, still at his desk and wonders,
as he turns south on Wentworth Avenue,
if the chief, the one of second shift,
the quiet one who sometimes stops for soup, or cup of steaming tea,
wonders if he had any part
in either who, or what
he had become...
then sighs, and hits the gas a bit,
to make the light
at Twenty-third.