Track over arch (savignyplatz, berlin) Poem by Ulrike Draesner

blinks
bar & bosom
blinks
brightly striped dominatrix
gives herself
up,
up: the

streets without stirring, lips
rolling, licking, black stockings
rolling over
hips, lips

wait without stirring—streets—
crusts lick entirely
in stocking semipermeable
black lines

blinks,
what a face
was two breasts,
blinks bar &
code: she

shifts to her other leg
they slide mutely
off, people, their gazes, track
rattles over arch

cushion, plush next door
café hegel, happy hour
waiter snaps
flush and down,

GI babbles confused
by glimpses & glooks,
her, boot
high, hip

out: the
taxi drivers' eastern talk,
what's fact is fact,
take-out on the corner

smells like wet paper
pope with eyes closed
stands, madonna region,
legs into stomach

track rattles over arch,
glove, smooth, white, points
at bare bushes full of cameras
sway start to click

toward
kant strasse
rolls
the childish spirit of
professor savigny

quietly giggling that
he has for
-gotten some-
thing or odor

hunger what
history was
elev-ate-d trains
(& how he laughs at that)

it blinks
from paper plate
in his hand
illegible
it blinks
a chinese
sign.

Translation by Andrew Shields