January Afternoon

outside dank as bad meat,
hands turn to hearths for comfort,
now nothing else bears touching:

chimney cloud suffocates the town
into a kind of Soviet eastern European village;
chills and fever, even God is coughing;

gray flakes, dead man traverses dead landscape
a funeral escapes further punishment
through the intercession of snow;

pigeons, mills, a river hooded by ice,
the heart is an unholy trumpeter,
a flat note for every family kiss;

epileptic weather, fits of wind,
dogs barking, trucks broken down,
a field of broken bikes, rusty nails;

brown Christmas tree on pavement,
white angel, done with shoulders.
clings to broken branch;