Jennifer Freya Helgeson
The Geography of a Pothole
After the rain,
the crater on Willoughby becomes a temporary eye
staring straight back at the sun.
In its shallow, oil-slicked depths,
the Chrysler Building hangs upside down,
shimmering in a rainbow of leaked unleaded.
A cigarette butt drifts like a barge across a miniature Atlantic,
and for a moment,
the whole clumsy galaxy is contained in a gap in the asphalt.
We spend our lives looking up for signs,
forgetting that the sky is always waiting
for us to notice it’s fallen into the street.