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The City
by Wendy Carlisle
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make the objects sitting
before you into a little city
-Lynn Emmanuel
When building
the city, think first about geography. Approach carefully.
Turn left off the hall freeway to find the tilled fields against the
horizon, blankets tossed along blue walls, houses with dim matchbox porches
spread like stacks of magazines. As you enter, discover the city is
table-sized, a small town, its streets shabby and tangled as clothesline,
the largest buildings—federal, religious—brightly painted, no more imposing
than cereal boxes. After the milk-carton clinic, note that neighborhoods
fuse in an undistinguished scramble of brick and stucco---jam jars, a walnut
humidor, rubyred glass. Check the table.
You will find everything there. All but the Selectman who, when he appears,
will have his hands crammed in his khaki pockets, and be pulled forward in a
steady lope through the snarl of slick cars, tumbled in the intersection
like silver knives.
Later, you will ask yourself how the days flashed and vanished like light
reflected off a lacquer breakfast tray, like moving traffic.
Copyright © 1999
Wendy Carlisle
All Rights Reserved |
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Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives in East Texas with her husband three cats
and a
120 lbs Rottweiler. She spends her days writing, walking the dog and
avoiding news reports about political scandals. Her poems have been published in Acornwhistle, Borderlands, Passager, Prairie Dog and are forthcoming in Poetry Motel, Ankhology,
Maverick Press's Whitetail Issue and on line at The Astrophysicist's Tango Partner, Perihelion, and Isibongo V3-1. |
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