I have exchanged so much for the intensity of living in New York City: personal space, expendable income, welcome silence, a night sky full of stars. It is deliberate work to live here. The city constantly refashions itself, and so must its people. We develop methods and mechanisms for self-preservation. Some are brusque, others gracious.…

This poem is a meditation on Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting, “The Last Supper.” But the meditation moves in an unexpected direction. The first stanza stays with the painting, though with a comical interpretation of “torn bread” scattered on the tablecloth. In stanza two, the poet moves to the wine—“or seeming / lack of it.”…