I’m waiting for the bus and imagine the street is made

of money, but it’s not the type of money accepted on this

planet or any planet. Sometimes I’m waiting for the bus

and I see the word “new” projected on people’s faces, but

not my own. I am no longer new. What are you if you

aren’t new? The bus is on the left side, and I am on the right.

I am waiting for the bus, but I am only wearing my Underoos,

and my stuffed cat can’t get on the bus because she doesn’t

have a MetroCard, and I am trying to pay the fare with a wallet

full of pigeon blood. It multiplies as it spills through the center

of the empty bus, foaming mouths at the edges of bloody waves.

My clones wear animal masks (lion, flamingo, toad) while we wait

for the bus. The bus is inside my skin riding my spine. None of us

is small enough to get inside it. I don’t care where the bus

is going anymore, but I want to be on it. Have you ever kissed

an august Buddha in the marsupial pouch of a bus? It feels

like being the soul of oatmeal, but better. Everyone I have

ever loved is on that bus. They are going to a protest, but nobody

remembers what the issue is, or the issue keeps changing,

like the words on the signs: the name of the candidate

or the name of the war. We are going to the march because

we want to be together, but aren’t. We are waiting for different

buses that don’t arrive. Waiting for a bus from inside an iceberg,

and before we can get on the bus, the icebergs have to melt.

We want them to melt because we haven’t had sex in twenty-four

and-a-half days, or because we like to eat grass-fed lamb burgers

in the back of a rhinestone stretch limousine that circles Alaska

before we can even find the bus stop. It’s possible I fell asleep

and we are all melting icebergs waiting for the bus, flooding

Foster Avenue with salt water and half-frozen chunks of displaced

whale spirits. One day I am waiting so long for the bus that I forget

I am waiting for a bus and find myself inventing music, dairy-free

béchamel and urban tetherball. They crown me the biggest shark

in the biggest city of the universe, and I am on every TV channel,

big-toothed grinning like I’m the host or something, but nobody watches

TV anymore. Everyone would rather be writing post-linguistic poetry

or studying artisanal adzuki bean canning. If a woman smiles on TV

and nobody watches yadda yadda, you know. So I go back to my bus stop,

remember I should have been waiting for the bus. I enjoy waiting

for buses. I’m a bus waiter. There’s beauty in waiting for the bus.