In his Manhattan bed, Pablo shrieks
over street honking.
Belly-flopping
down, he finds
his after-dinner smoke
beside a turkey thigh
taunting his subtraction.
How cruel he mutters to Sally.
Sally purrs with laughter
as Pablo duck tapes his hands
to vault his torso up,
plop onto the windowsill
like a bear up a redwood.
There he gawks at his legs:
they run through
a Houston intersection,
stop before a dirty
bodega’s doorway,
gape inside with phantom sight
upon a deli spread
beckoning an invitation
of distrustful ingestion.
Pablo squints at the surreal
(could he identify his legs
in a leg line-up?)
when he slips, bruising his
paper skin
on the hardwood floor.