Gray, ugly, already starting
to crumble. What the project’s
planners had meant it to say
was: The future is here.
What the residents heard:
You do not belong.
Fortunately, it was possible
to pry the windows open.
On any given night,
you could stand on the street
& watch the litter sail out:
Happy Meal bags, cigarette butts
leaving trails of sparks,
yesterday’s paper.
This year-round autumn
blanketed the courtyard,
& was only swept aside
when the police needed
to outline in chalk
another occupant who’d vanished
through the one good door.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- Next Life
- Leaving
- The Last Lion in Pennsylvania (Version 2)
- Sensei
- The Origin of the Ear
- Medusa, Bodhisattva
- Air: A Grievance
- Valediction
- Project
- Iconoclasm
- Celestial Body
- Of Two Minds
- Educational Films
- Two Kinds of Boxes
- Comforter
- Before Genesis
- Anonymous
- The Viking Buddha
- The Legend of the Cosmic Hen
- Sacrifiction
- Seahenge
- Without
What a wonderful series – liberation from the same old stories we tell ourselves and can become imprisoned by.
Thanks, Jean! I’m still working out what the series is about (other than poems in the past tense), so that’s very helpful.