Here I am fondling the particular mode of a poem
that feels like a walking poem, feeling Devin
Gael Kelly's "Self Care in the Land Of A Thousand
Horses", wherein what holds us or creates
stillness is pace, gait, the pitch of the step-breath,
precise pauses signaled by syntax so that
I may be walking and thinking about onions
until fire hydrants remind me of lace – of that slip
I must have left or else lost in the year I was losing
everything, or else using a dash to press
my face against the glass of a bakery
where two women argue over cupcakes,
using their hands, raising their hands to
push away words, and how hands always
fall into birds when one cannot hear
them, when this one woman catches a bird
in the air & kisses the less expressive
lips & everything stops for this moment's
raw reconciliation, the scent of later sex
& cupcakes—though I am still moving.
I am haunted by break-ups, faking, lost
cats & earthquakes who keep secrets
if only to surprise or deflate us
like this thing in my ex said about forgetting,
or how I'd already done it, before the
chicken and the egg scenario nothing
came first, he said he couldn't imagine
me ever having children & this is when
I knew his imagination was suffering
or gutted by performance anxiety &
I can imagine him now taking off shoes
in a room with big windows and rising
to greet a woman who can't imagine him
not imagining her in stilettos. And
I am using these sharp shoes to bring you
back to the street, back to the surface
of asphalt where we are walking and
thinking about one thousand horses.

Addendum: I think the ampersand makes it move faster?