The Arch

Of all living monuments has the fewest facts attached to it, they slide right off its surface, no Lincoln lap for them to sit on and no horse to be astride. Here is what I know for sure: Was a gift from one city to another. A city cannot travel to another city, a city cannot visit any city but itself, and in its sadness it gives away a great door in the air. Well a city cannot except for Paris, who puts on a hat styled with pigeon wings and walks through the streets of another city and will not even see the sights, too full she is of the sights already. And within her walk her women, and the women of Paris looking like they just walked through an Arch... Or am I mixing it up I think I am with another famous female statue? Born in its shadow and shook-foil hot the facts slid off me also. I and the Arch we burned to the touch. “Don’t touch that Arch a boy we know got third-degree burns from touch- ing that Arch,” says my mother sitting for her statue. She is metal on a hilltop and so sad she isn’t a Cross. She was long ago given to us by Ireland. What an underhand gift for an elsewhere to give, a door that reminds you you can leave it. She raises her arm to brush my hair. Oh no female armpit lovelier than the armpit of the Arch.