Cohoes Falls
by Stephen Sturgeon
My dream was called “The Invention of Society
in Cohoes, NY,” shale bed, parliament of paper mills
skidding ceremoniously into the Mohawk. To this day
my favorite vampire is the driveway of 24 Rose Court,
who scratched daily from onion paper legs a tonic
to thwart woolen summer thirst. As you listen now
my voice can be discovered in gray icicles fanging
Bedford Street, which reliably congregate into the form
of a mastodon’s skeleton, its wastewater translucence
like glassine. After cold fisticuffs when I was 8
with the chandelier, my mother dug crystal and wire
out of my hands, and dropped that garbage in an ashtray
while my conqueror slouched on the porch, drinking soup,
a rug draped on its baluster. Its knuckles had clinked “Our Town”
against my little nose. In another town minutes ago
I made 20 dollars on Sparks Street bumbling to my home,
because in the road I found it, and I make what I find.
You say what you hear, my house was called “Show Me the Way.”