She was the last can of soup, her steaming

metal poured along the late afternoon streets

into the dirty gutters, across the boulevards

the avenues, the promenades

And down at the track they

placed bets on her brood as in her veins

the tomato soup, hot as blood poured

She ate the soup as if it were the food of the gods

She crossed the street dragging down the sun

Pizza parlors closed one after another in her wake

She called from a great distance inside the waves

Her hair holding sea-horses and starfish, her arms

green with the brine of millennia

As if the evening could understand the formulae

of DNA that dripped from her eyes

She knew that no one would understand that the food

of her flesh was something that no man could ever

do without in silences that boiled over like hurricanes

No one survived her misunderstood sentences

None could take their eyes off her

Steam rising from every manhole in the city

that children rebuild every night in her sands.

 

Larry Sawyer has recently had his poetry translated into Portuguese by the magazine Tabacaria and has been published in Cokefish, Nexus, the webzines Snakeskin and FZQ. Forthcoming work includes poetry in Mesechabe, Skylark, and in the webzines Savoy and Big Bridge. In his spare time he edits milk magazine. Volume one features Cid Corman, Bill Berkson, Wanda Coleman and Frank Lima among others. milk's new website can be accessed at http://www.milkmag.org and Larry can also be contacted at milkmag70@hotmail.com. Selah...