“The City, 2” by Yvonne Blomer
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “The City, 2” by Yvonne Blomer.
The City, 2
By Yvonne Blomer
On city streets and under soaring skyscrapers
graffiti sews the city.
What is a city?
Dark paths. A woman walks
not watching, not watching
she knows in her bones the wayโ
A woman walks. She walks from garden
through her own historyโ
passes the great cities, villages, festivals,
arches, aching to collapse under old brick.
A city is loud voices, playgrounds,
the Italian cheese shop, the bodega
tucked down a sky-lit alley.
A woman walks. Sheโs walking herself home.
A city is a woman tattooed in streetlights
and moody nights. Hidden spaces,
forgotten bones, graves, grains, faces.
A city moves in windโ
fried food at the pier, and boats full
of fish guts.
Mallards and pigeons in the cityโs squares and a cityโs
urban trees: maples, ash, linden.
Alleys form in the structure of trees, in the shape
of roots, hollowed trunks
like underground tunnels and hiding spaces.
A city is ancient. Indigenous.
Waterways, deep ghosting
creeks and rivers. Damned,
a city rivers itself from sunrise to lightโ
streaked night where car headlights
mark the terrain in red smears
and ghostly diving shapes.
Copyright ยฉ Yvonne Blomer
Forthcoming in Death of Persephone: A Murder (Caitlin Press 2024)
Yvonne Blomer is a past poet laureate of Victoria, BC and the 2022-2023 Arc poetry magazines poet-in-residence. Her sixth book of poetry, โDeath of Persephone: A Murderโ is forthcoming in the fall of 2024. She lives on the territories of the Lษkฬสทษลษn (Lekwungen) people. Yvonne is currently accepting poems on the theme of ice for a third water-based poetry anthology, details at Caitlin Press, deadline June 20, 2024
Subscribe to Poetry Pause, or support Poetry Pause with a donation today!