Perhaps a city is a living thing. Each city has its own personality, after all.
Los Angeles is not Vienna. London is not Moscow. Chicago is not Paris. Each city is a collection of lives and buildings and it has its own personality.
So, if a city has a personality, maybe it also has a soul. Maybe it dreams.
-Old Man from "The Sandman" by Neil Gaiman
Poetry from the Elm City: July on the Green
Published Tuesday, December 27, 2005 by Starry Saltwater Rose | E-mail this post
I wrote this when I returned to New Haven while living in Boston for two months. It was a two day visit, to see a boy. That dates this poem to July 2003.
July on the Green (a clandestine visit)
I’m in love again. Her pavement skin
and tar street veins creep over her body
and under my feet. She knows the sorrows
of the drinkers and whispers a lonely, lovely
song into the ears of the night creatures.
I remember the names of all of her spaces,
the intimate phrases of pillows and sheets.
I left her and now I return, a remorseful lover.
I crawl into her bed (the green place in her heart)
because she’s always pulling me close and closer.
I came to find a man, to take a trip to his home.
We fight and we scream and we destroy ourselves
and us. I watch him tend lovingly to his plants
on his front stoop, looking for any way back in.
But there is nothing and I turn my eyes away.
Desperate and melancholy, I ask for an oxycotin:
he sucks the green coating off, grinds it fine,
lines it up and rolls up a dollar bill, offering
it to me like an absolution, a salvation, escape.
On my knees, I inhale, snort, pull it all inside.
Just as quickly as I ran to her open heart,
I run away, back to Boston and into pretty eyes
that I could never love. There was no place
for me in New Haven that day, that weekend,
but one day she will find where I fit into her.
When I can love her right, when I can be here
everyday, then I will ask her to “Marry me.”
I have nowhere to go, but she holds me anyway.
I know I have a wanderer’s heart, but goddamn—
she feels like home to my seeking, shaking hands.
About me
- I'm Starry Saltwater Rose
- From New Haven, Connecticut, United States
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