Falling In Love With The Streetlamps

Constellations bridge lights make in East St. Louis
are the only kind you've learned to name:
South is Nympholeptic Schoolgirl,
West is Friendly Widow.
Along this river whiskey's cheap
and if women were as easy as the traffic
here you could be happy.
Instead the bars close early
and each new job degrades you worse
than classmates expectations.
Whores learn something from your face
that turns them cruel, and you stagger
beneath the glare of streetlamps
and those hard smiles, home.

What's calm is dreaming red light
smooth as stockings, or waking
to a dot-lit curve of hips
as real and distant as your wife.
You understand your heart,
that crazy muscle,
would hold dear an ugly waitress
or your landlord's half-wit daughter,
but all you have to trust
is the brightness of those patterns
in a town where the only girls you know
are names of streets
you whistle through when drunk,
and drunk's a form of kindness.