Vacating an Apartment

1 Efficient as Fate, each eye a storm trooper, the cleaners wipe my smile with Comet fingers and tear the plaster off my suicide note. They learn everything from the walls’ eloquent tongues. Now, quick as genocide, they powder my ghost for a cinnamon jar. They burn my posters (India and Heaven in flames), whitewash my voicestains, make everything new, clean as Death. 2 When the landlord brings new tenants, even Memory is a stranger. The woman, her womb solid with the future, instructs her husband’s eyes to clutch insurance policies. They ignore my love affair with the furniture, the corner table that memorized my crossed-out lines. Oh, she’s beautiful, a hard-nippled Madonna. The landlord gives them my autopsy; they sign the lease. The room is beating with bottled infants, and I’ve stopped beating. I’m moving out holding tombstones in my hands.