Poetry of Issue 9: OUTSIDE ON THE AVENUE

and it is finally happening and the office workers are glad,

and the salesgirls in their plate glass windows look out and smile,

and spring is liquid and clean and it is everybody’s little secret,

and the boulevard is thin as a long-stemmed rose,

and the boulevard is aware of its unearned flower existence;

spring! jealously guarded, the ultimate justification,

it can’t be shared with just anyone, though it belongs to everyone;

spring! on the move, two blocks from anywhere you happen to be standing,

no more second hand moonbeams;

spring is working its magic in the anxious avenues,

and in the dark cafes waiters are setting out silverware

and cranking down red and white awnings,

and along the boulevard traffic edges back to life,

traffic is eating itself like a snake eating its own tail;

and the language of the street is cherry blossom pink,

and the cannibalistic impulses which dominate a city

have been put to rest, which is to say that the city

is tentative and kind, and matter-of-fact,

although kind’s too tender a word for a city,

a city is supposed to be hurried and inconsiderate,

a city is supposed to be angry and ungentle and not kind,

and solid as the bedrock it stands on,

even if it is all glass and steel these days,

gossamer as a moth’s wing,

even if it wears a wardrobe of flowers,

a city is supposed to eat holes in your shoes;

but the pollen and the swirling perfume

is too much for the city,

even the hardest geometries

have to give way,

so the geometry is loosening up

and the professional women are walking side by side,

and the man at the next table is stirring his coffee with an absurd little spoon,

and a loose page of newspaper print is holding commerce with the wind,

and the men in the kitchen are laughing and sweating and alive,

they live between garbage cans and the grease trap and don’t care,

and it so hot in the kitchen you could cook a stone;

it has certainly cooked the brains of the chef,

who has wild hair, he has been drinking again,

and is cursing one of the waitresses;

and the dishwasher’s face is red with laughter,

he finds the chef amusing;

and the waiters are gathered like geese in the doorway,

they are plotting revolution;

and the busboy’s arms are tight and bulge like a welterweight,

inside his lean belly there must be a rock which knows it is a rock,

and inside that rock is another rock which believes it is a flower,

although ‘believes’ is not the right word for a rock, not determined enough, not concrete enough;

‘believes’ is not a focused enough a word

for an object so solid as a stone

5.5.21