Acquittal

First Avenue toward Twelfth Street: nearly passed
but then thought no: I want whatever's in that
Pakistani diner window: and so entered: bought

a bag of deep-fried dough -- crisp greasy envelopes
of pasty chickpea and potato -- spiced enduringly:
amazing how persistent their insistence is: I think

I'll taste them long into the night; yet, punctuated
by a string of tiny burps, a sort of personal expression
of small geysers popping gas, I would appear through

this succession of too many hasty bites to have
amassed into the density another tasty contribution:
not that I enjoyed this product of the culinary arts --

I will not write the other way, through nether parts,
its visits startle me -- but when I add its currency
into the layered splay of my New York, and thereby

keep Manhattan's hungry mystery and richness
conscious, fresh and deep, I then acquit myself before
its stern internal Court and am allowed to fall sleep.


.