“
Walking Blues Not Packaged for Individual Sale
I learned the word bodega
the same day I learned arbitrage
riding with you down to Richmond
to buy armloads of the cheap cigarettes,
the ones you'd packed duffled
aboard a Chinatown bus to resell on the sly
in Brooklyn. Back on Earth,
driving your truck home alone, I turned
both words over in my mouth
again and again, polishing the gemstones.
My mother learned bodega from
'Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes'
and asked me to take a picture
of the first one I saw when I visited you
When I tried, you told me Don't preserve
the evidence, dumbshit so I never got one.
Besides, whatever glitter Paul Simon
burnished onto the word had gotten lost
among the toilet paper rolls and
rubber gloves that lined the ceilings,
though I found a glimmer of it
napping on the warmth of the ATM, a cat
who was named Lucy not after diamonds
but after the cigarettes. This was back before
you figured out how much more
you can make by just stealing what you wanted.
Back when I still thought of myself
as the kind of friend who would visit you in jail.
”
”