Paul Martínez Pompa

I'm Sitting in a Car

at a curbside in a city
I’d like to forget
watching the streetlights

disappear & reappear
behind the trees.
It is cold

and the wind is wandering
up and down the streets
like a corpse

startled back to life.
I have no intention
of unfolding

the poem in my pocket.
I carry it everywhere I go
in case I might at last move

past the first sentence,
which isn’t a sentence at all
but a murderer, wandering

up and down the streets
looking for a parked car
with a corpse inside.