Just before we left
  I took a last walk
  down the halls, that we had
 
skinned to plaster and
  spackle—scratched 
  and gouged, scattered
 
across the floor like
  hunks of chalk.
 Wire stripped;
 
it glinted like copper
  runes. It was nice
  to see it so empty.
 
 
We divided the spoils
  all night, and the
  following day, pushing
 
stacks along the table like
  coins, opening
  heaps like oysters,
 
running our thumbs down
  seams, so the loot
  popped out like peas.
 
Later, we would slap them
  like dominoes, cupping
  our hands for the reverb,
the hard, hollow click.
  I walked away a winner
  but had not much to show
 
for my night with the language thieves.
  I couldn't fence it. 
  It was too hot to keep. 
                        

By spring, she was living in upstate
New York, working for a paving company: 
hot asphalt, crushed stone, sand and gravel.
The view from her window was great heaps
of stone, scooped, conveyed to barges,
an inlet of water, a distant high bridge, mountains.
Below her flat, old white men drank and talked
about guns and rights. She could hear, 
late into night, the tunk! of darts, like 
the patter of of raindrops slowed way, way down 
by a drummer intent on mastering their rhythms.
She thought about her father, Ellis Perkins,
in the days when they still talked about jazz --
Louis Armstrong and Jabbo Smith at the Rockland Palace
and the next day it was all over Harlem
how Satch had smoked him with F over high C.
How Cootie left the Duke.
How one day everyone opened the windows, and played
Illinois Jacquet’s solo on “Flying Home”
to the streets and stoops: blat... blat... blaat... blaat... blaat...