Arsenault’s Tobacco Magazines Novelties is closing:
everyone has locked arms and is dancing.
The Arsenaults have given away flags, trinkets,
greeting cards from the ’40s. Everyone dances
so that the floor shakes like the floor of a boat
while musicians huddle in a corner,
hardly noticing the audience,
and young men shouldering film cameras
as they circle the dancers
record for reasons known to film students
a rum bottle changing hands,
the singer’s face, the girl next to me,
her blue eyelids and fingernails —
and there’s a small dog here unseen by the cameras;
as the floor shakes, as the floor rolls, he jumps
straight up and barks at the noise everywhere.
Change your name. Change your clothing. Change your habits and your commonplace routines. Change the routes you use to move across the city’s warp and weft and change the many tools with which you lay your hands on such conclusions as you may.