Dust
Night comes faster in September
when the bank is on the phone
& I’m explaining again how
my New York Sports Club closed,
how I stopped leaving home, how hard
I tried to end my membership.
By now I’m yelling across the world
at an associate who says I understand,
so sorry to hear, like all HSBC
associates before & after her. In sleep
I grind my teeth to fine powder,
dreaming of bodies in the towers,
pulverized as each floor fell
on the one below. I watch it all
crumble on hold while
my associate contacts Disputes,
the narrow downtown streets,
survivors fleeing like ghosts
through clouds, even the leggy
mannequins in Wall Street
shops hip deep in it.
*
Cuddlebuddy
You tested positive:
we live in separate rooms.
My mother emails shit
about her OurTime date
who wants a cuddlebuddy.
Sprawled on the damp
loveseat with brain fog,
you take calls from Scam
Likely, watch a spotted
ocelot catch river rats, say
It’s unfair, you get the bed,
but you have the remote.
*
Hilary Sideris’s poems have appeared in recent issues of The American Journal of Poetry, Barrow Street, Bellevue Literary Review, Free State Review, Poetry Daily, Rhino, Room, Salamander, and Sixth Finch, among others. She is the author most recently of Un Amore Veloce (Kelsay Books 2019), The Silent B (Dos Madres Press 2019), and Animals in English, poems after Temple Grandin (Dos Madres Press 2020).
