If My Inheritance Were Visible to the Naked Eye

The man on the subway in dirty white Converse would turn
sudden, still holding a rolled flier under his nose like a mustache,
to click like the clasp of an old pocketbook on the dust of golden

around my body, forming the shape of an egg.
But how full of biography we are today! reading
book club fiction on our journey, tears and banjos

welling up. My vita, I’ll tell you, is this: I read a book
about Stamford, Connecticut, and within a week I’m there.
When I put on sparkle eyes, enunciate in round tones

from the diaphragm, people shiver and sigh
and feel comforted. At times, I feel up to it.
So that’s pretty much what I’m dealing with.