Facades on Main Street have a lift
towards it, but the Manayunk sky
isn’t there, a mirage, a conglomeration

of spent wishes for a better human future
which can never be lived in the blackened
glare of well-trodden pavement. Its

expanse argues loudly for the subaltern
and its accessibility, a superior up
is down, a superior blue is black,

a superior open is packed tight
into a closed linearity, night’s deep
recess. Now, I take the trouble

to interrogate pavement, which
can only deny truths of not-surface, hotly.