it’s raining again in Manhattan.

from the ferry, constructs scrape the sky
and hunch their steel shoulders against low-bellied clouds,
the bar’s regulars, rigid and solicitous as
they clutch at their glasses, rigid and solicitous in
their self-exile, solitaire their misery.

smoke-wreathed and smog-lunged
they cough and shudder in the premature air
the chill of November far preceding gold and red;
there’s nothing so warm here today.

the ferry, personified and named, perhaps
loved by captain and crew like a brother,
or a first car, pushes through whitecaps
and away from the pocked hills;
from here I can almost see the nonexistent sun
glinting off my opened window,
on the thirteenth rib of the tallest form.

the drawings below, prostrate on the floor
will be running with displaced charcoal,
soaked and wrinkled like old faces;
faces with smeared makeup after
a night that lasted too long.

half-finished, never-completed—
what sadder fate could there be?