All the way from

Sometimes a reorientation.
   A different face to the sea,
sometimes you meet a city, neck bared:

they say that nothing has happened here.

There are bush rats that die in the air vents.
They say I visit
all the way from
and I watch girls make fish braids,
sitting in each other’s laps, that press
of hipbones.

The skies are operatic. 

I walk for hours past striated windows, willows,
along overpasses, loosened and alone.
I try on lace skirts,
watch miners roll their maps
into screw-capped pipes. I’m portable.

I buy ginger cubes dipped in dark chocolate,
for their burn.
For the way that we were happy here,
for the way I’d let this city bite
me hard.

View this poem on The Disappearing »