Poem: The Queen of Darry Street

The Queen of Darry Street

My dreams are spun from litter.

From trash I make the world of form.

All that fills my head on a sunny day

is sun through the eyes and conversation

trapped in a dome that rises on specific

terms I know nothing about.

My front yard stretches to my latest thought,

which is beautiful but not clever.

Abutments of insect industry fill my sight.

A woman who blocks the horizon tells me

the neighborhood is going downhill,

her feet something the pavement rejects.

She is language at its horrifying limits.

Her words break the silence of noon,

her voice like pork cracklings underfoot.

She says her dog is in heat and jumped 

the fence three times last week. She says

her rent is half the price of life.  But enough

of the world her parents made in boredom,

enough of her dog’s intention to breed. 

I want to go back inside and sleep her off.

I am sometimes her, sometimes something

like her when I meet women like me

with my standards. She is all I ever thought

and feared I’d become, her hands shaking

in my direction, in the face of all I’ve done

on Darry Street, her eyes weighing the price

of guilt. She is a vapor coming from the asphalt,

my words returning to me, the cost of living

something I’ve never earned.

I cannot sleep off my vision of humanity,

everyone huddled together under a tarp,

my back facing them or what they’ve done 

to me, society siphoned into the form

of a woman, speaking with a woman’s

concern. 

I can only be as honest as I have room to be.

I cannot break down the walls of my house 

to make more space. And the little bit left

of me that doesn’t hold a scepter or make mud

with my spittle can’t be found. I am larger 

than the noise coming ahead of me in the darkness,

the traffic trapped in the previous night.