Beware the smiles of kind old men,
the brownstone flipped and paid in cash,
the "Yes we can!" yelled yet again,
the winners of the market crash.

I must have lost my accent years ago—
that’s if I ever had it, twanging vowels,
slurred consonants—something I suppressed
between the tongue and teeth and throat and jowls
or simply lacked. I really don’t quite know.

Better watch out or motes of fairy dust
      will inundate your eyes
with sunlight's surface glittering.
      It isn't so much lies

The quality of the outside light is shifting,
a chilly glare thawing to something brighter,
something softer, something slowly drifting
into a Maxfield Parrish glow, a hint
at least. The pulse picks up. The head gets lighter
as something like romance scents the cloying air.
A coming fling? It isn't that at all.
No woman waits behind a brownstone's stoop.
It's something else. I'll let you in the loop:
I'm thinking of New York some time last fall.

I've avoided writing this essay for months, but not because I don't think KIN has a role to play.…