Cities and suburbs, real and imaginary.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Excerpt from poem I'm working on.

I do this for fiction a lot. Might as well do it for poetry, too. Here's just a piece of something much larger I'm working on:

[quote]
...I read these advertisements here, and wonder where people
meet in this city. A woman in a car shouts in all caps. I SAW YOU
I SAW YOU I SAW YOU... driving a car, two eyes locked - woman
and man - but there's no way to speak in cars. Nothing to do
when the highway bends the lanes apart. A man in a grocery store describes
your summer dress, the way you touched your beautiful son's hair,
and he couldn't think of things to say in time because you
were already loved by a man – your younger one – who
wouldn't breech an interruption. Another man stumbled in
all the rings on your hands, dozens of beautiful rings, and doesn't know
what they mean, but he describes a tattoo, where dolphins
swim in circles around your navel, their bodies
curved like chasing each other's tail in the lunar water. You're looking
for him at the gym, where he hides inside his headphones, like you do
now, with me, on the train.

Was your smile on the train something real, or a memory of fish...
[/quote]

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