Stuff

There’s a city in the

stains on the window.

The dust built up as

new buildings pile on old.

It’s true, but you want a more vital image:

10 needles in a grid pecking skin;

27 white horses, 4 green birds, and

a lizard in black jutting over the channel.

The way water wears sunlight as a mask,

but a shadow cuts right down.

You can spend all your time

thinking about stuff.

On one hand, the vast lot of

people picking garment bushels

under the auction house’s

blank gaze. On the other,

the container yard, the ships

stacked high with electric

pink boxes. Past the port,

the stinking city dump.

Going, coming, gone.

Structures asprawl like

someone dropped them

and never picked them up.

The girls on the dock in

their secondhand genders,

draped in evening rays.

Wipe the dust from the window

and you’ll get an idea of

how little a thing can

matter if you

let it

//

Truce Hansen sings, writes, sews, knits, and hangs out with her friends in Oakland, California. The family she loves is far away, so she sends them postcards. She doesn’t know all of her neighbors, but she would like to, even the ones with big dogs.