The Gutter Intake

The street has given up on being a road.

It’s a slow-moving soup of gray water

and the things we dropped in July.

A lottery ticket, soaked to a pulp,

spins in a circle over the iron bars.

It’s circling a blue bottle cap,

a tiny, desperate motion before the drop.

There’s a rainbow slick trapped in the corner,

an oil spill the size of a dinner plate

shimmering between two rusted slats.

The city is drinking everything we lost,

and it sounds like a throat that won't clear.