Suburb Heartbeats

This is a place to slow
down and smoke
a clove-scented
cigarette,
even when
the carved angles
of her knowledge line
slash like scissors.

Still, they hold up
her curves from
splitting sideways,
and because
her lungs as ever are
filled with clamors
for nicotine-twitched fingers,
her gravel-lisped voice
revisits a familiar
moment
with her red,
euphoric traces of
the Chanel lipstick
she wears,
walking through
the suburb
of her heartbeats,
where she’s been to
some dozen times before.