ANSIR® Profile: Empath / Visionary / Kinsmen
Boss: Visionary

Four

around one am
the neighborhood shuts down
and you
can see it like it is

you stroll down fairfax
the local thoroughfare,
and delight to the rhythm
from a neighborhood bar--
"the devil went down to georgia"--
but only listen from the sidewalk

there's a little barber shop on
the corner of fairfax and kinsmoor
that you've always wondered about--
you get your hair cut at some
national chain in the faceless mall,
but you'd rather have a family place,
local-owned--
is it still in business?
no
"for sale by owner"
"call Jerry"

you wonder why a house
has an exterminator's calling card
on the doorknob:
recent customers?
no resident to remove the card?
perhaps the roaches murdered the resident
that'd be crazy

and then strolling down indiana
you see someone still awake--
either a wizened black woman
or a leather chair
on the second floor of a triplex
and you see her companion a
sexily plump chicana aged twenty-six
you guess from the arms

but you can't look again
for the leather chair
may have already seen you
and you wish you'd snuck around--
avoided view and spied like a man but
then you wouldn't be strolling

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