"narragansett" poems
A full day's work
Has me feeling exhausted,
But as I take hard rights
And skirt the uneven pavement
I am a machine.
I am fused to my seat,
And two spinning plates
And one fork are
Extensions of my will.
The nine point five miles
Seem so much shorter at night,
After the suits have made Their daily rushed exodus,
And the streets and avenues
sleep, quietly.
It rained all day, so the road
Is wearing a blanket of diamonds,
And the motor oil wrinkles shine.
The downpour has filled the world
With fragrance,
And as I pass through
Affluence to arrogance
To intolerance to vagrancy
On my trek across
A divided city
I'm overwhelmed.
Honeysuckle and lilac
Give way to pine and dogwood,
Then car exhaust and a polluted river
Precede wet garbage, dog ****
And marijuana.
I saw my first rat in the District tonight.
Nine months in,
And I've only seen one.
It makes me glad I grew up
Where I did,
Where all you need for
A rat in your apartment
Is a baseball bat
And a Lightning Bolt record.
I'm glad I learned how it feels
To live with two feet
Planted firm to the earth,
To feel harsh 1930s sidewalks
Haphazardly littered
With broken glass
Burn my bare feet
Every summer,
To feel the cool
Narragansett Bay sand
Sleeping just under the surface,
And to feel the sole
Of my five year shoe
Finally give up.
I'm glad I've seen success
From the underside,
So that when my arthritic hands
Finally reach up and grasp it
I'll know what to do with it.
But mostly I'm glad
I get to pull up to my building
At ten past midnight,
Sweaty and tired,
Climb three stories with a
Bike on my shoulder,
Pet my cat, and crawl into
Bed with a warm soul
Who was brought up the same,
With no clouds
For her lovely head
To get lost in.
May 29, 2013
May 29, 2013 at 8:47 AM UTC
Her frame accentuates a state of grace without the idiosyncrasy of a modern day woman.
The curve of her hips reminds me of lazy summer days
spent watching the tides rolling in off Narragansett Bay.
She's beautiful in every essence of the word.
Sep 11, 2012
Sep 11, 2012 at 3:35 PM UTC
On a flat gray sea a freighter moves
to feed, to care, to improve,
sunlight gone, lights blaze,
against the careless sea
the freighter goes, little by little.
© 2016
Aug 23, 2016
Aug 23, 2016 at 7:49 PM UTC
Narragansett Bay,
July.
Probably 2005.
Flowers larger than her head,
their meat pushing
up from the depths of the green,
housing rabbits, sparrows, small
salamanders.
A small girl
maybe seven if the math is right,
buried deep in the dirt, searching
for sand
from the strip of the
Narragansett beach
probably in July, the year
most likely 2005.
A New England Paradise:
July in 2005, all skin, all bones, all relishing
the warmth of the sun, her easy connotations of the familiar word: "brown."
Brown house, brown sand, brown dog, brown, the easy color
"brown."
A composite,
a mix of The Narragansett Bay set somewhere throughout
A July, the year of
2005.
Dec 1, 2017
Dec 1, 2017 at 10:32 AM UTC
Are you okay? She asks me.
I nod yes but look down
She knows I am not
My past still haunts me
when night circles in
darkness never fleeting
In class I sit with my psychology professor's voice
somewhere in the distance
"What does anxiety feel like?"
Anxiety is the cheese steak
I threw in the garbage the fateful night
my friends in college told me they hated me
It is newly 14 year old Erin
looking over the side of Narragansett Pier
on her birthday thinking what if her head hit those rocks
The fear that no one will love me
I will continue in this world the way I came and will go,
alone.
I don't know how long these memories
will haunt me
my soul forever altered
Jan 22, 2019
Jan 22, 2019 at 11:02 AM UTC