a siren's coming down the hill

a siren’s coming down the hill somewhere behind me

as I enter the roundabout at night.

it’s as dark and cluttered in here as the inside of a lock.

I turn off the radio and pull over the couple inches

it takes to get to the curb of this huge, curving median.

my dog is in the passenger seat, the japanese take-out

on the floor below him, and the city center’s

pulsing down there across the water,

but nothing gets my attention now except that police car’s

sluice of lights and sound breaking through the logjam of cars.

it’s in my rearview mirror, then in real life

to my right, peeling away from our sticky mess

down the fifth avenue bridge exit, and I’m moving again too,

signaling, to ward off those who wait to enter the roundabout,

then heading down the fourth avenue bridge,

parallel to and just barely behind the police car,

all the sudden, a zoetrope of staccato lights over there,

red white and blue, blue red and white, white blue and red,

as seen through the spaces between the tiny, concrete pillars

lining the railing at the side of that other bridge.

it’s silent now, though, as if the banshee’s inside me,

triumphant, and instead of hearing my pulse, for once,

I’m seeing it: a caged, guilty heartbeat the whole city can see.