My view has a sooty cathedral in it.Often I pass a fountainwith the face of a mermanabout to spit water throughchipped lower lip butholding it in. There will beanother postcard rack.Another stall at the marketdisplaying African wax printson tote bags, dresses, broad skirtssold by a white man. I copy a listof French colonies and their datesinto a blank white notebook.On a bed of ice layhaphazard piles of silver-gray fish. “The eyeshould be clear,” said my mother.I don’t want to lookat the eye. What’s visiblefrom inside a Brutalist building.Institutional greenlinoleum tiles c. 1961, of a sturdy kindthe year my mother emigrates.What’s visible alongsidethe nearly motionless canal.Alongside a riverbrownish-green, predictable,like a few-weeks flingthat soon splits in two directions.Irrepressible bodies of watersurrounded by buildings from centuries priorwhose filigrees gather sootas excess definition.Wreathed in trashsomething classicaland repulsive endures.The exterior of the famous museumonce a fortressis power washedbehind large scaffolds fitted with tarpsscreenprinted to mimicthe exterior of the famous museum.One vertical band of newly washed portionbare and ridiculous beside thecar-crammed thoroughfare. Pissagainst trees and walls and the seams where walls meettrickles and stinks like a moat.In a concavity where the likenessof another wealthy person once stoodpigeons sit.The oxidized faceof a statue of some goddessstreaked in it.In the gay club the dancer showers in front of us livebehind glass coylynot revealing his dickwhile screens project him digitizedin slight distortion on either side of him.He snaps a small white towelin front of himself and keeps it upagainst the glass with his own weight.Under this danceflooracross from the bathroomsa red room cordoned off.It doesn’t have to be there to be there.At the market’s endsplit tomatoes, nectarinesso soft they’re left for free.