Familiar Shapes
Like The Millennium Army, this is a world building exercise for a novel that I will write in the future. This one is a poem, and it concerns the lower portions of The Ridge, the city that divides the world.
Familiar Shapes
Even gutters can not cry in
Ramschackled shade—wild, corrugated shapes that
Hound knife-thin alleys, that wall touch
And sight. They loom on each side,
Melanged wood and metal, splintered and rusted and
Varied as my skin. And when a sun,
A booming sun
Collides above they shake, holler
Their age—a tumid groan, a sound
Like dying cattle (we do not know
Cattle). And the gutters dry
From spilling dust.
This one is long. There is an arm wide
Gap between, through which men with carts
And masks on their faces drag detritus,
Grandma and unfortunate uncle splay
Relaxed like rafflesia. Do not plug
Your nose the smell, that would be a shame—
Just watch. This one has no walls but
A grate so you can see; if you were a
Falcon (we do not know
Falcons) you would know it is glassed atop and
Within unfortunate uncle is sown by rubber
Gloved hands.
A booming sun:
A small bridge crosses between masses
Of hammered planks and barred windows,
Enters foggy memory where
The armless mourn debts unpaid, hear rattles
In cups swirling with oil. A black haired black
Hearted woman screeches her nails against
Divots in the wall; licks the grain of the bar,
Slick with angostura tang; she knows there
Are no longer any perfect squares, but
Hundreds of children every minute
Remember these shapes.