"Loading Zone" by Tara Deal

There can be only one New York

morning when you discover

the gingko trees

lose their leaves all at once, give up, make a mess.

Velvet

is elsewhere

and then some

more pieces of the puzzle

settle on cement.

There was a box on the edge

of an open window.

There was a cat in a box.

Someone cried

but couldn’t catch it, and now old men look

like they’ve forgotten

fingerless gloves while playing chess

in the park.

The season is always colder than you thought.

Hot dogs,

dirty water.

Carousels.

Mustard-colored

sweaters from the thrift store:

Do other people’s things

even/ever fit?

Alterations!

The tailor and the cobbler and the pizza maker

share a space and now

is the hour

for coffee.

Cash for diamonds.

Gold exchange.

Reasonable rates.

A taxi will take you.

A yacht on the river

goes behind a skyscraper—what

more do you want? Objects cannot

be observed

without moving—wait for the light,

the signal,

the sign—Pay Inside!

Stop and smell the flowers in buckets.

Feel free.

Paper or plastic.

Canary yellow.

Candy in pockets:

lemon drops, butterscotch.

Someone is sweeping up the trash,

someone is being swept away

down the sidewalk, in a rush like a flash, flooding, past

the bodega, bank, bodega, whatever,

then that store that stops time,

no, fixes watches.

Featured Art: Untitled photograph by Patricia Leonard

Tara Deal is the author of That Night Alive, winner of the 2016 novella prize from Miami University Press. Her previous book, Palms Are Not Trees After All, won the 2007 novella prize from Texas Review Press. Her work has also appeared in failbetter, Tampa Review Online, and Washington Square Review, among others. She lives in New York City.