I dreamed our city’s slender attitude,
of ruined moonlight
in the bombs. The dreamer’s femur is

the squeaky wheel. If love could only speak
and never hear, she said
between the bombs. I loved her

safe route to mercy. Lyme disease
and bombs had similar inaccuracies. On foot
she wandered through

pretentious fire. You wouldn’t think to
look at death, she said
at night, the doctor who delivered it

was darkness. As fever struck the garbage
dump, I dreamt I was her Carthage.

—