XIII: Walls#
the husk of walls that city shucks
accumulates and concentrates
around like rings in ancient trunks
where measured age with circle gates
the spiraled line amassed through time,
deposits buried down substrates.
at summit’s crest, the joints are thick
and licking tongues of moss ascend
the darkened blocks from quarry hauled
on buttressed back, in stone suspend
the garden court where crowds took root
and grew their plans of walls to tend.
from center peak the wooden slats
erect the map with tangled fence
to trace a grid of patchwork yards,
these charts of dreams in ground commence
the flattened course of borough life
where burgs and burbs did once condense.
then moving out, the bricks of red
in crooked rows descend to meet
the lanes of carriage tracts now black
and scorched with tar in shapes of street
where crimson dust from crumbled walls
in dancing twirls across concrete.
next grey cement of molded squares
in towers stacked to portal sky
with wires fused and humming signs;
they arc and rise, on edges vie
the vines entwined in rushing growth
to split on spine, like nuclei.
at last the stable struts of steel
designed as straight as rays of light
reflected back on silver glass
the lattice links both left and right;
the history in circled sweep
constricts the city sphere so tight.
through sections cross the avenue
from point to point and time to time
the human shell that forms in turn
the arches bend, the steepled chime,
that wilts and sheds, but fossils kept
in barrows born their salt and lime.
April 2025
Date |
Publication |
Status |
|---|---|---|
April 27, 2025 |
Frontier Poetry |
Pending |
May 10, 2025 |
North Appalachia Review |
Pending |
June 1, 2025 |
The Louisville Review |
Pending |
June 12, 2025 |
Merion West |
Pending |