Why does it mean
anything that the girl

sitting beside me,
her hair cropped
punk-close on the
sides, long and gelled

stiff at top, her
legs in camouflage
leggings, her boots
black as crude oil,

the odor coming from
her a mixture of
incense and some
kind of bitter and

rocky herb, that
this smell is exactly
the smell of my
grandfather's sickbed

brew, the last-resort
swamp liquid
a Chinatown-alley
herbalist prescribed

for him on that
summer at the end,
the black water
of the profane

cupfuls meeting the
black waters that
were rising inside?