Detroit, City of Straits
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February finds a likeness of spring in this unicorn
embossed bedspread. Warm in its closeness, his palm

rest flat against his thigh. Downstairs, the chicken

is frying. The greasy smell wells up through the floorboards
of his small room, a kitchenette for a family cramped

into the upper-half of a one family house from the 30s.

The old stovepipe hole in the roof allows sleet
into a rubber bucket beside his bed

in the only room of the house without heat.

His breath rises on the loose clouds of winter blowing through rags
stuffed between a broken window and its screen.

He dresses quietly in the reservoir of dusk; the time is coming

to run errands for his father, to go looking for the younger brother
running in the streets with those girls from the neighborhood high school,

to go and buy a Bible with the money his mother

gave him, to look up those passages
that his pastor dunked him for last week.